we can win
by TA Salmalin
Summary: Part 3 of 5 of 'history has its eyes on you' series. He screwed up being Hokage and he screwed up Naruto's miracle second chance, and now he's alone, still expected to save the world, and Kakashi truly doesn't understand how anyone could think that would end well. He certainly doesn't.
1. Chapter 1

Warnings: Kakashi's severe, ongoing PTSD and trauma, including nightmares, flashbacks, and panic attacks, and suicidal thoughts. We have reached the fix-it part of the story, so any deaths and fighting will be much less apocalyptic, and I'll post individual chapter warnings for that.

Kakashi is not actually a child, and arguably child neglect warnings do not apply to him, but there will be references to similar experiences during his first childhood and it could still be trigger-y. I am not out to assassinate anyone's character here. Sakumo isn't a bad or malicious person in this story; he's an extremely busy single parent with very little parenting experience, and has a genius child who is determined to prove that he can raise himself without any outside interference. I was trying to create a realistic backdrop for the man Kakashi will become, and in my opinion, healthy, well-adjusted six-year-olds do not become chuunin.

Timeline Note: I have an excel spreadsheet cross-referencing the anime and wiki that I spent hours on, and then I just (metaphorically) chucked the whole thing out the window. I couldn't reconcile a single, coherent timeline. I took some ages and information about childhood personality from canon, and some I just invented. I hope the end result isn't too confusing, but I tried to be very clear when backstory deviates from canon (mostly ages and when they first meet Kakashi).

* * *

Once again, Kakashi finds himself an outsider in his own mind, disembodied and disoriented.

 _Who are you?_

Once again, he can feel the surprise, fear, and curiosity of his younger self, much less controlled than the last time. So he must be very young indeed. He doesn't have any more of a clue what to say to explain his presence this time around, how to convince himself of his mission, but it also doesn't matter, because he no longer believes that he can do it.

 _You're from the future?_

How many times does he have to fail before the people around him acknowledge that it's just his nature? Ah, but now there's no one left who knows him.

 _You're strong._

Now that it's come to it, Kakashi doesn't want to be the dominant personality. If he just gives his younger self a few hints, maybe that will be enough. He thinks of a lifetime of promises, to Obito, Rin, sensei, Naruto, Gaara… and he doesn't think he can bear the weight any longer. It's too much, and he's all alone now. He'll be breaking those promises—for the second or third time, in some cases—but he's used to being a disappointment.

 _I don't know what to do._

And it's as Kakashi is passively awaiting oblivion, more at peace than he's been for decades, that his younger spirit takes the initiative, pulling Kakashi in and fading out of existence.

 _I hope you do._

And Kakashi breathes.

* * *

Kakashi doesn't recognize where he is.

Again.

It's not as nice as where he woke up last time, in the Land of Waves. It's bigger, but everything could use a good wash, and there's something oppressive in the air, sapping the little will he can muster to get up and investigate.

But he can't lie here forever. Or, he shouldn't, rather.

With a small moan, he forces himself to unbend, his limbs stiff from being so tightly curled up, but not as stiff as they should have been. That's one thing about these time shifts that isn't completely horrible: physically, he seems to get healthier every time.

Mentally, well…

He stands and leaves the depressingly bare room to look around, because if there's one place he absolutely does not want to be, it's inside his own head. The main room is equally shabby, and the table is littered with bottles and the odd overturned cup: signs of solitary, unhappy drinking.

Okay, so this definitely isn't Kakashi's apartment, wherever it is. He never drinks alone.

The house is much more traditional than he prefers, with delicate screens and real tatami flooring. The table is an antique, though like the rest of the house it's seen better days. The wood is dull, and there are distinct scores where someone has dug a kunai into the edges.

And then it hits Kakashi like a fist to the head, what his mind has been trying to protect him from.

This is his home, his childhood home, in the days after his father's last, fatal mission, but before the fatal part.

Kakashi runs out of there, briefly considers looking for a bathroom but settles for the kitchen instead, won't be the worst thing that's happened to this sink, and he throws up before he remembers he's wearing a mask and chokes, rips it off and throws up again, right into the pile of dirty dishes.

Even standing on his toes, he can barely reach.

He retches until there's nothing left in his stomach, then leans against the filthy counter and just tries to breathe, though the air seems to get caught in his throat.

The sodden mask is dripping onto his shirt, so Kakashi folds it up and rests it beside the sink. For some reason, it's suddenly very important that it be placed just so, and he tries to find a free space on the crowded countertop.

From somewhere deeper in the house, there's a sound, something alive and moving, and he doesn't try and identify it, can't, because there's loss and then there's _loss_ and he isn't ready for this, will never be ready for this.

His mind comes to his rescue, goes completely blank, and his feet start moving of their own accord. He sprints through the house, sliding on bare wood where the mats don't cover, careening off the walls with enough noise to wake ten elephants. He stumbles into his own room more or less by accident, dives into the closet, and crowds into the corner, pulling as much of his haphazardly folded futon over himself as he can.

He can hear only the sounds of his own ragged breathing, forces himself to hold his breath, every muscle taut as he strains his excellent hearing for…

He can't even form the thought.

There are no more sounds, the whole place is as silent as a tomb, and he allows himself a tiny, shallow breath.

His body clamors for more, but he doesn't let himself gasp, trying to stay as quiet now as he was loud in his mad dash through the house.

He's a little dizzy, between the controlled breathing and the suffocating weight of the futon, and he falls asleep before he hears any signs of life but his own.

* * *

Kakashi stirs—groggily, because he's still a bit oxygen-deprived. There's a weight being lifted off him.

He assumes it's a body-in his experience, statistically likely-and he blinks as sunlight streams through the wide open doors of the… closet?... and then a face comes into focus before his watering eyes and Kakashi just. Stops.

He feels like his soul is lifting along with the physical weight, body or whatever it doesn't matter because _sensei_.

The light fills his hair, so it looks like he's glowing, and his smile is a warm fire on a cold day and oh-so-familiar and a touch worried—though that's familiar, too—and there was a time Kakashi believed that everything in the world would be alright, just because this man said it would.

Before Obito.

Before Rin.

Before Kyuubi.

And all that weight comes crashing right down again, because Kakashi hadn't been thinking before, hadn't wanted to think before, but it's not just fa… Sa… this house that he's going to have to live through the loss of, but so, so much more.

Kakashi turns away from that face, not that it isn't already burned on the inside of his brain forever, and tries to curl up so tightly that he disappears.

"You didn't come to training yesterday."

Kakashi is never leaving this closet.

"I hoped that you'd finally listened to me and taken a break."

Even with perfect chakra control, which this tiny, useless body does not have, he can't survive more than a week without water. A week isn't so long.

"Obviously I should have checked on you sooner."

Kakashi curls up tighter, and he still doesn't disappear but it is painful, and between that and the hands clamped over his ears he can almost pretend that he can't hear anything.

He's concentrating on that so fiercely that he's not sure how long it takes before he realizes that he really can't hear anything, he's alone.

Sensei left.

His stomach feels cramped. It must be hunger.

* * *

An eternity later, Kakashi opens his eyes, roused from a half-doze by voices.

Familiar voices.

"I thought he was your friend!" Sensei again, aggravated like he only gets with one person.

"I'm no nanny, and he's a grown man!" That was Jiraiya, the one person.

"And what, that means you haven't bothered to speak with him? Don't you even care how he's doing?"

"I have! I do!"

"When?"

"He said he was fine!"

"Does this look _fine_ to you!?"

Silence.

Short-lived silence, as sensei barrels into Kakashi's room, dragging Jiraiya by the hand like a recalcitrant child.

" _Look_ at my student," sensei says. "He has been fifteen minutes early to every single training session since I got him, and constantly bothering me for more besides. Now he won't come out of the closet. He's got vomit all over his shirt, for fuck's sake."

There's a long, heavy silence. "And Sakumo?"

"I haven't seen him," sensei says. "I've been a little more concerned about my student, who, as you _ought_ to know, is _five_. There should be someone looking after him."

"That kid is more together than most adults I know," Jiraiya says.

Sensei whirls on him so quickly he almost yanks Jiraiya's arm out of its socket. He pins Jiraiya with a look that should have incinerated him on the spot, opens his mouth, but only a furious squawking sound emerges.

Jiraiya holds up both hands in a frantic request for truce. "I didn't mean that. I mean, I did, but I also see your point, you're totally right." He's slowly backing out of the room. "I'm just going to go check the rest of the house, you, you carry on, captain. Minato." He flees.

"I think Kushina's been a bad influence on me," sensei says. "Though I'm sure she would say it's a good influence."

He moves out of Kakashi's line of vision, and Kakashi doesn't try to follow him. He's already decided never to move again, and given that his arms and legs have long since lost any feeling, he probably couldn't have moved even if he did want to.

"Wouldn't you like to get cleaned up a bit?" sensei asks. He moves back where Kakashi can see him. "Where are your clean clothes?"

Kakashi breaks his own rule about not responding to any external stimuli, and closes his eyes.

"I found some on the floor but… they're clean _er_ , certainly." He laughs a little, though it comes out strained. "And the ones hanging in the bathroom aren't dry yet. Why aren't they outside? They'll dry a lot faster if they can get some air."

Kakashi doesn't answer.

Sensei sighs loudly. "Okay," he says.

The next thing Kakashi knows, his limbs are protesting painfully as he is lifted into the air. He makes a short, startled noise before clamping his mouth shut, resisting the urge to spit when he tastes old sick.

Sensei pays no heed to his unresponsiveness, sitting him against the wall and briskly stripping him of his shirt and trousers. He disappears, there's the sound of running water, and then all Kakashi can see is a towel, vigorously rubbing his face.

After he's apparently clean enough, sensei tosses the towel on the floor and strips off his vest, bundling Kakashi in the bulky material and lifting him onto his hip.

Kakashi is struck forcibly by how small he is now, because he hasn't been held like this since… actually, he doesn't think he's ever been held like this.

He has an unsettling urge to rest his head against sensei's shoulder, which he resolutely ignores, and experimentally pushes against the arm restraining him.

It doesn't budge, of course, and sensei merely gives him a stern look and carries him— _carries_ him—out of the room.

Both of Kakashi's hands are free, but even if he could somehow defeat sensei from such an awkward position—unlikely—what did it matter? Where would he go? What would he do?

He exhales deeply and forces his tense muscles to relax, and his head falls naturally into the curve of sensei's shoulder. Why did he object to this earlier? His dignity? What a joke.

He can just see sensei's concerned expression out of the corner of his eye, so he closes his eyes, wishing he could shut out the world so easily.

* * *

Eventually, he is set back on his feet. It seems like too much effort to keep standing, and his legs fold under him, leaving him sprawled on the floor.

"Are you alright?" sensei asks, sitting him up and leaning him against… something. It doesn't matter.

Kakashi doesn't answer.

"…right. Do you want a bath?"

Silence.

"Well, I'm going to give you a bath, okay?"

Kakashi passively allows himself to be bathed and dressed in one of sensei's shirts. He ignores food and water, and is eventually deposited in a large, western-style bed.

"I'll be back in the morning. Try and get some sleep."

Kakashi ignores the concern, just stares up at the ceiling in the dark.

* * *

This goes on for a while. Kakashi isn't making any attempt to keep track of time, but the painful emptiness in his stomach is numbing slightly, and it's easier to sleep now, so… a while.

Sensei keeps trying to get some response from him, and persists in periodically washing him.

The frantic worry on his face does give Kakashi a few pangs, but he can ignore them. It's just sensei's nature, taking pity on broken or helpless things. But he barely knows Kakashi, he'll get over it. Better now, before he develops some kind of attachment.

They're at a table, and Kakashi is having some difficulty holding himself up even with the support of the chair. There's food, but it doesn't interest him.

Jiraiya and sensei are talking—arguing, rather—as they often do.

"Maybe you should try the hospital again."

"Minato, I've tried to take him, you've tried to take him, they're not going to take him, and that's the end of it. And I'll notice you haven't taken your charge to the hospital, either."

"I just can't believe any healer would turn their back on a patient!"

Jiraiya sighed. "Yeah, well, people are idiots. They're scared, and they're blaming Sakumo because he's the most convenient target."

"It's unprofessional! Medical and psychological help should be available to anyone who needs it, and village gossip shouldn't even be a factor! This kind of thing never happened when Tsunade was here!"

"Well she's not here, is she?"

Silence. "Sorry, Jiraiya-sensei. I shouldn't have said that."

Another, longer silence. "You really could try to take the kid in. Not sure why you haven't."

"And what if they won't take him, either? Or try and sabotage his treatment?"

"Do you really think things are that bad?"

"I'm not sure. I think Kakashi was being harassed, but he refused to talk to me about it. And certainly he's been… shunned… as completely as his father has."

"Shit."

"And this isn't exactly a normal situation. What am I supposed to tell the medic, that suicidal depression is suddenly a contagious disease? Kakashi is five. Yes, he's a genin, but he's never been on a real mission, there's no obvious cause of this total shutdown. Even I'm having a hard time accepting it, and I'm living with him." Sensei's voice is starting to rise, in pitch and volume. "And you know what? Sometimes I want to just shake some sense into Sakumo, which isn't fair, I know, the man has been through a terrible ordeal, but… how can he not care? His son might _die_ , and he _doesn't care!_ "

"I think you need a break, Minato. Go home, get laid, get drunk, something."

"I'm not leaving."

"I really think—" Jiraiya cuts off abruptly.

That can only mean one thing. The two men speak freely in front of Kakashi, as if he's no more than a piece of furniture, but they're a little more circumspect around the fourth occupant of the… wherever this is.

Kakashi tries to think of nothing, to find the haze that has clouded his thoughts of late. He'd foolishly indulged in the pleasure-pain of hearing two voices he never thought he'd hear again, but now he's awake enough to be aware of the man shuffling in, stooped under an invisible burden.

Kakashi doesn't want to see him, doesn't want to acknowledge him, can't appreciate that he usually doesn't see him, because in this moment he is. After destroying the future of the entire shinobi world—twice—this one death shouldn't affect him as much as it does.

But it's his first failure, and even after all this time it's like standing in a rainstorm of needles, cutting him up inside and out. He was the only one in the house, he saw the man every day, he should have known, should have done something, and it was bad enough when he hated the man for his weakness.

But then he had his own fuck-ups and came out the other side of his passively suicidal ANBU career, and with that came understanding. Forgiveness.

And, of course, pain.

So much more pain.

As punishments go, it's no more than he deserves, but he's weak enough to hope he won't have to endure this much longer.

And this time he gets off lightly, because sensei decides he's tired of watching Kakashi stare at his food and lifts Kakashi out of his seat and into his arms, like a baby, and carries him out.

They go back to the room that's apparently been designated as Kakashi's, and that's when they have the first break in their routine.

Instead of letting Kakashi doze on the bed and reflect on his failures, sensei sits them both down. Kakashi's head lolls back.

With a noise that's equal parts angry and sad, sensei grabs some pillows to help support him, then grasps Kakashi's chin in his hand and forces him to look him in the eye.

"I've obviously let this go on far too long already. I'm going to give you a choice: either you start talking to me, right now, or I'm taking you to the hospital. Tonight."

Kakashi's eyes widen. This is unexpected. And, judging by the look in sensei's eyes, no idle threat.

"There's something so strange going on right now, and I can't trust that the hospital isn't a part of it, but I suppose I'll have to accept potentially-dangerous help before you're beyond help—" He cuts himself off, takes a deep breath, scowls. "And, and I know how much you hate the hospital, you're the most uncooperative patient I've ever met, and I know Jiraiya-sensei thinks I'm crazy but I thought there was a better chance you'd talk to me instead of some strange psychologists. Which, okay, I can admit when I'm wrong. Probably I should just take you now…"

"Don't," Kakashi croaks.

Sensei gives him a smile he's never seen before: grimly triumphant. "Well, I'm going to anyway. I am the adult, you are the child. I am the sensei, you are the student. It's my job to know what's best for you when you don't have the perspective or the judgment to make those decisions for yourself. And right now, I am _ordering_ you to talk to me. Or I am taking you to the hospital. Your choice."

Kakashi is speechless with indignation, which sensei somehow divines is different from his earlier apathy and has the nerve to look pleased with himself. While Kakashi might care about this man more than he's ever cared about anyone, right now he kind of wants to punch him in the face.

"You can punch me if you want," sensei says, and for a moment Kakashi is terrified that he's somehow reading his thoughts. "You can hate me, you can cry… whatever you're feeling, it's okay. Just tell me."

Kakashi isn't feeling anything, he wants to say, though that's obviously a lie. Despite his best efforts.

"Hospital then?" sensei asks, when the silence stretches.

Kakashi opens his mouth to protest, since he's already talked and technically fulfilled his part of the agreement, then quickly shuts his mouth. Sensei's knowing look makes the punching option seem more and more attractive. He's acting like he really is five again, letting himself be manipulated like this.

Then again, it's obvious that if he doesn't say something of substance he's going to be having this conversation with the specialists at the hospital, and that was bad enough in ANBU where no one gave two shits who his father was.

"Why?"

Sensei jumps and almost pitches off the bed.

Kakashi rolls his eyes.

"What do you mean?"

Kakashi eyes the man suspiciously, but he seems genuinely confused. It's a look sensei does well, and makes him look eerily like his son. Actually, here in this time, he's not much older than Naruto as Kakashi last saw him.

He adds that to the list of things to never think about again.

"Why do you care?" Kakashi clarifies.

Sensei's face falls, and for a horrifying second Kakashi thinks he's about to start crying. "Why… Kakashi, how could you ask me that?"

Kakashi doesn't want to answer, because he's in the all-too-familiar position of having verbally misstepped, but not sure how or where.

Sensei reaches out and gives him a little shake. "Don't do that. Tell me what you meant. Now."

"Well," Kakashi says, still feeling wrong-footed and as childish as he currently appears, "I meant, you don't know me, you've only been my sensei for a few months, doing stupid D-ranks you could do in your sleep, and I'm just… some stupid kid, taking up all your time with my stupid problems, and you're a great ninja, the youngest jounin in the village, prodigy of one of the Legendary Sannin, you're going to have _real_ students someday, and they'll be as great as you" to me, anyway, before I fucked them up, too "and, and…"

Kakashi trails off. He doesn't know what else to say, and his rambling speech was kind of ruined by his having to stop for breath every three words. Sensei still listens patiently, of course, and Kakashi's abused heart aches a little more. He, of course, remembers years with this man, but before sensei forced the issue by enrolling Kakashi in the chuunin exam and Kakashi had the audacity to pass it, the village treated its youngest genin as a joke. This sensei has never fought beside his student against impossible odds, saved his life and had his life saved in return.

That relationship isn't ever going to exist.

Sensei grasps his shoulders again, and Kakashi's so tiny that those hands can almost circle his whole body, and Kakashi thinks he's going to be shaken again but instead sensei… hugs him.

Sensei pulls back before Kakashi can decide what, if anything, he's going to do about this totally unexpected development. The man makes sure Kakashi is looking right in his eyes. "Kakashi. Nothing about you or your situation is stupid. You are my student. Your problems are important to me. You are important to me."

The bottom drops out of Kakashi's stomach, and he forgets how to breathe.

"Kakashi, breathe with me, slow down, shit, sensei!"

"What did you do!?"

"I don't know! We were just talking and he freaked out!"

"Well you can't both be freaking out, here, let me help…"

There are black spots in Kakashi's vision when he finally manages to get his breathing somewhat under control. As soon as he's capable of any sort of coherent thought, he throws himself out of sensei's grip, which hadn't a chance in hell of working if sensei hadn't let him, and ends up sprawled awkwardly half across Jiraiya's legs.

Swearing, Jiraiya helps him to sit up, letting him lean against his massive chest.

Kakashi's thoughts are tumbling all over and around each other. He wanted to remove himself from the situation before sensei got too attached, but now it looks might be too late, and Kakashi never ever ever wants anyone to feel the way he felt, feels, because Kakashi is the one who is left, not the one who leaves, but he _can't_ , he can't bear this, not even for sensei, he can't endure this again…

"Don't start that again," Jiraiya says, shaking Kakashi hard enough that his thoughts rattle around in his skull, getting all jumbled up.

That's fine, he doesn't want to think anyway.

"Now, obviously you did something," Jiraiya says, sounding as stern as he ever does, and sensei squirms a little.

He's only a teenager, Kakashi reminds himself, somehow finding it in himself to feel even worse than he already does. Fuck, Kakashi's probably twice his age, what is he doing, putting his problems on this… boy.

"I just told him that I would care if he died," sensei says, sullenly, and he sounds so disturbingly like Sasuke in that moment that if there was anything at all in Kakashi's stomach he would have been sick.

As it is, he still makes a noise, and Jiraiya pounces on it. "What was that?"

Obviously he can't say anything about Sasuke, and his attempt to explain earlier made everything so much worse, so he's just not going to say anything.

Jiraiya shakes him again, and he catches his tongue painfully between his teeth.

"Sensei…"

"Quiet, Minato."

"No," Kakashi says, quite without meaning to, but once it's out, he decides that's what he wants to say. So he says it again. "No."

"No what?"

"No, no one would care!" Kakashi snaps.

Jiraiya reaches over and actually claps a hand over sensei's mouth, cutting off whatever he'd been about to say. "Then you're blind and deaf as well as stupid," he says.

That… is not what Kakashi was expecting. He can't see Jiraiya's face from this angle, which is frustrating in the extreme.

"Your dad throws a fit every time you're in the same room together, and he's so determined to distance himself from you 'for you own good' that he's trying to distance himself right off the mortal coil!"

Now that's completely unfair, and Kakashi slams his fist into Jiraiya's leg, even though in his weakened condition it's probably not even noticeable. "You're so full of shit!" he shouts, and has to gasp for air when his body protests the effort. "People don't kill themselves for the good of others! It's all about them! Because they can't deal with their shit! It's just selfish, it's not, it's not…" He can't catch his breath, his whole body protesting, and he's forced to just sit there and seethe.

"You're wrong," Jiraiya says. "People kill themselves for all sorts of reasons, and maybe part of it is selfish, but right now, with your dad, he's got it into his fool head that he's ruining your life just by existing."

"Fuck you," Kakashi wheezes, and if he could have lifted his arms he would have tried to strangle Jiraiya. "I would do anything, _anything_ , if I thought for one second he cared enough to… to stay for me."

"Well," Jiraiya says, "did you try?"

" _Jiraiya_ ," sensei says, and his face Kakashi can see, and he looks as furious as Kakashi has ever seen him.

"The entire village is either spitting in his face or pretending he doesn't exist, which one are you?" Jiraiya says ruthlessly.

That stops Kakashi in his tracks, because it's true, he was a cowardly shit who threw himself into his training to be the best ninja in the village and covered his face so people would stop associating him with his father and…

He is the same as them.

He didn't even _bother_ to support his father, at all, in any fashion.

It seems there was still one aspect of that situation that he hadn't included in his self-flagellation, and he feels like the lowest worm. "Both," he says, because the absolute least he can do is own up to it.

Jiraiya doesn't say anything, just made a disgusted sort of noise in the back of his throat, and it's like a knife in the eye.

Kakashi pulls his knees up, and even that is a strain, and rests his head on his arms, one hand going back for the tanto he used to carry. He used to sit like this all the time, before he went into ANBU and learned more effective—and less childish—ways of coping.

He used to fantasize all the time about coming home just a little earlier.

One day early, because he dropped out of the exam when he realized he wanted his father to be there, and his father would promise to come next time, and they'd train together.

A few hours, and he would tell his father he made chuunin, and he'd realize his son was worth noticing, and they'd have dinner to celebrate.

Even just one hour, and he could have put himself between his father and the blade, it was short, it could have saved him…

His hand meets nothing but Jiraiya's sleeve, because of course he doesn't have that tanto yet.

Because this time, it's not an hour, a few hours or a day earlier, it's many days, weeks maybe, and if Jiraiya isn't lying…

He could save him. He could fix this.

Sasuke died despite his efforts, but was Kakashi really trying to save him? He can't be sure.

This time he would be sure, and if comes down to it, and he has to put himself in front of that blade, well, it's still a dream come true.

"Father thinks I don't need him?" Kakashi asks, because there's no room for misunderstandings here.

"Well, basically," Jiraiya says.

Kakashi nods once, decisively. He's going to be the neediest child in the Five Elemental Nations.

He digs down deep for the strength that carried him through a thousand missions, and forces himself to sit up straight.

"I can't believe you did that," sensei says.

"He's not ready for what you're offering. If looking after Sakumo gets him up and eating, then you have more time to convince him you're right."

"Kakashi is not in any way responsible for his father's condition, and to let him think that is… wrong."

There's a pause. Kakashi swings his legs off the bed and tries to stand. "You didn't see Tsunade," Jiraiya says. "You don't… you've never faced this. Sometimes you have to let people fuck themselves up, because at least they're still alive, and there's still a chance."

"Tsunade is a grown woman. What happened to her was awful, but she is a medic and a ninja and an _adult._ Kakashi is a child."

"And a shinobi."

"That was still wrong."

"And if we're all very lucky, Kakashi will grow up to hate me for it."

Kakashi's legs won't support him, but Jiraiya puts an arm around him and basically carries him into the other room. He even drags a chair over so Kakashi doesn't have to sit on the floor.

And there is his father, looking deeply troubled. "Kakashi?"

Kakashi tries to look helpless. It isn't hard. "Tousan, I'm hungry."


	2. Chapter 2

Warnings: Some of Kakashi's self-destructive behavior early in the chapter looks like an eating disorder and may be triggering.

* * *

Kakashi wakes up disoriented and sluggish, and just stares at the ceiling for a bit.

Then he remembers the previous day, and looks around him frantically.

His father is nowhere in sight.

He rolls off the bed, banging his knees, and shuffles for the door. He feels a little stronger, but he can't properly appreciate it because _where is his father_.

He fell asleep over dinner, someone must have carried him back here. He'll have to be careful about that. Anything could happen, he has to be there all the time. Just in case.

There's no one in the kitchen, and his stomach is tied up in knots as his anxiety and weakness make his hands and feet numb and shaking, and he has to stop and be sick in the wastebasket.

"Kakashi?"

He wipes his mouth quickly, not wanting to admit to his weakness, then remembers that that's what he's supposed to be doing and tries to look as pathetic as possible.

But it's only sensei.

"Are you okay? Feeling sick?"

"Where is he?"

Sensei frowns at him for a moment, then forces a smile. "He's still sleeping. Why don't we rinse your mouth out first?"

In the end, sensei brings him a cup in his father's room without much protest, and Kakashi curls up on the bed and tries to compose his undisciplined and mostly starved body into the light meditation that passes for sleep on ANBU missions.

* * *

True to his resolution, Kakashi sticks to his father like white on rice, catching naps when he can't keep his eyes open any longer and jolting awake a few minutes later, sweat-drenched and panicked from his nightmares.

He lets his father feed him like a baby, first because he can't manage his chopsticks, and then because he pretends he can't. All four of them bathe together, which is awkward because sensei and Jiraiya are obviously still fighting and Kakashi keeps almost drowning, but they manage. And sensei has stopped trying to get him to sleep in his own bed.

Everything is going perfectly until Jiraiya opens his big mouth and declares that Kakashi is looking so much better, he can probably feed and bathe himself now.

His father's face flames with embarrassment and he drops the bowl he's holding, spilling rice everywhere.

Kakashi wants to shove Jiraiya's face in it.

Predictably, he is banished to his own room that night.

Kakashi weathers a panic attack silently. It's one thing to support his father by letting him provide for him, and quite another to be a complete fuck-up and a burden, so he tries to keep from having any emotional breakdowns where his father might see or find out about them. He paces until he's nauseous, trying to burn off some of his anxiety and still too weak for actual training, when he hits on the obvious solution.

If he just throws up everything he eats, he'll stop getting stronger. Then everything can go back to the way it was.

He'll have to be careful not to get caught, though he can explain away a few instances as panic attacks, so long as he can convince Jiraiya that there's no need to bother his father with such details.

He pads silently across the floor—he supposes he'll miss the mobility, but it's such a small price to pay—and listens at the door. Jiraiya is snoring loud enough to rattle the windows, but that's typical. He eases the door open.

Sensei is standing there.

Kakashi considers slamming the door and hiding, but sensei somehow senses the direction of his thoughts and catches it.

"I'm coming in," he says.

Kakashi sighs and gives up without a fight, trudging back to sit on his (pristine) bed.

Sensei turns on the light and frowns at the untouched sheets. "You haven't slept yet?"

Kakashi shrugs.

"Jiraiya doesn't know you like I do," sensei says. "Don't even think about purposefully making yourself sick. That's not what he meant."

Kakashi is surprised—and more than a little uncomfortable—that sensei knew what he was thinking possibly even before he did. And… he's not the same kid sensei knew, he's a grown man, with decades of experience that sensei couldn't possibly know about.

Sensei obviously takes his silence as disagreement. "I'm serious, Kakashi. Your father's well-being is not your responsibility."

Kakashi blinks. "Of course it is."

"You are the child, and he is the parent. Your primary concern should be your own well-being."

"I'm not a child," Kakashi protests automatically, which sensei hopefully doesn't think is too strange.

Sensei glares at the ceiling. "I am going to kill Jiraiya," he says.

Kakashi needs to win what is shaping up to be a pretty serious argument, but instead his mind chooses to dwell on a day very far in the future, when Tsunade took him aside and told him that Jiraiya had died, and she needed some advice on how to break the news to Naruto.

He remembers her forced composure, a very fragile veneer that didn't reach her eyes, and Naruto crying over ice cream for some reason. He'd tracked down Iruka for that one, he always seemed to know what to say to Naruto. So much grief, while he just stood around like the useless idiot he was. He hadn't even known Jiraiya wasn't just dragging Naruto around his favorite haunts any longer.

"Shh," someone says, patting his back.

See, why didn't he do that, instead of hiding behind Iruka like a coward?

Kakashi has his face buried in someone's chest, and he smells _home_ and _safe_ so he stays there for a moment, curled up and crying.

But eventually he sits up, scrubs at his face, and remembers that he's been bawling all over sensei, and they're fighting.

"I didn't mean that about Jiraiya," sensei says.

Kakashi flushes, embarrassed now by his complete overreaction. Especially from sensei's perspective.

"Though I'm certainly going to give him a stern talking-to. Actually, maybe I'll have Kushina do it."

Kakashi manages a small, watery smile, and sensei positively beams at him.

"Kakashi…"

The boy in question sits up fully, preparing for battle.

Sensei sighs. "You are remarkably mature," he says. "Too mature for your own good, I've often thought."

Kakashi isn't sure how to respond to that, so he stays silent.

"But the only person you are responsible for is yourself. And even then, I'm here to help you."

Myself, and the world, Kakashi thinks.

Sensei frowns like he knows exactly what Kakashi is thinking. "Just… think about it. You are smart, capable, and a talented ninja, but you're also a five-year-old boy. You can let yourself be the boy, too, sometimes."

Kakashi cringes a little, remembering that he is, ostensibly, an adult, and the fact that he is being accepted as a five-year-old with no effort on his part is downright embarrassing.

"And I've once again said the wrong thing." Sensei sighs again. "I'm still not going to let you endanger your health, though."

Bristling, Kakashi glares. "I thought I was responsible for myself."

"Not singularly. You're not to concern yourself with anyone's well-being but your own, but other people are free to concern themselves with yours."

"That's not fair."

"Tough."

Kakashi seethes quietly while he marshals his arguments. "I am a shinobi of Konoha, and I have a responsibility to the village."

"And how is starving yourself until you can barely move, let alone fight effectively, fulfilling that responsibility?"

But Kakashi has an answer for this one. "My father is much more of an asset to Konoha that I am, therefore it's a more efficient use of resources for me to ensure that he, a jounin, is able to fight. I'm only a genin, and not even allowed on real missions. Actually, I tie up so much of your time, maybe you'll be able to go on more missions if I can't. So I'm _twice_ as useful to Konoha."

Sensei doesn't look convinced. Actually, he looks a bit ill. "Do you seriously believe that?"

Kakashi fidgets. He initially thought that was why Gai insisted on hanging out with him all the time, to try and keep Kakashi functional and of use to village, right up until he learned that the man was a skilled jounin in his own right and also a lunatic who befriends socially inept nutcases for no reason. But he still thinks the reasoning is sound, when applied to someone who isn't Gai. "Um, maybe?"

"Kakashi," sensei says, and just from his name Kakashi knows this isn't something he's going to want to hear. "Why do you think I took you as a student?"

Kakashi thinks he knows the answer to this question, which immediately makes him suspicious, but he's never been able to fathom the twists and turns of sensei's reasoning, so there's nothing to do but try and guess. "You are the youngest jounin in the village, the prodigy of one of the Legendary Sannin, student of the Sandaime Hokage, himself a student of the Nidaime Hokage. You have a legacy to continue, and you took on a prodigy of your own." Kakashi isn't entirely comfortable referring to himself as a prodigy, especially compared to the people he called comrades in his other life, but it's not like it's a secret from sensei. Although he hasn't done anything especially prodigious lately. "Don't worry, sensei; you're still young, you'll have other students."

The next thing he knows, Kakashi is being half-smothered in what, after a panicked few seconds, he realizes is a hug. After a brief consideration, he leans into it. He has no memory of being hugged the first time he was this age, and he wants to remember. That's two already.

"Kakashi," sensei says, apparently addressing the top of his head because he hasn't relaxed his grip one bit, "I have some experience with being the smartest person around, and I remember how lonely I was before… well, before Kushina and I became friends. Everyone wanted to be my friend, but not because of _me_ —they only cared about what I could do."

Kakashi fights his way out of the embrace so he can be properly outraged. " _Everyone_ likes you sensei!" he shouts, moderating his tone when he remembers that his audience is only a few inches away. "We can't go two steps in the village without every single person wanting to talk to you about something!"

Sensei laughs and ruffles his hair, which Kakashi _hates_ , and he scowls at the man.

"Well, trust me, I don't have as many fans as you seem to think. So when I heard that a student was taking the graduation exam at _five_ , I had to see you, I thought maybe I could give you some advice, even discourage you from taking the exam—" He laughs again at the expression on Kakashi's face. "Remember, I hadn't actually met you then. It's probably for the best that I had a mission and couldn't meet you before the test."

Kakashi huffs, but leans forward, interested. He hadn't known any of this.

"Anyway, I'll never forget the first time I saw you. It was just after the exam, and some of the bigger kids—well, all of them were bigger, but you know what I mean—were picking on you, and you just, I don't remember what you said, but you shut them down so hard they were probably still scraping their dignity off the floor a week later. And not a punch thrown. You were a tiny avatar of disdain, chewing them out for their immaturity when you couldn't have touched their heads if you jumped. That was when I knew that I had to be your jounin-sensei. I fought for you for almost a month, took it all the way to the Hokage."

Kakashi flushes bright red, remembering their first official meeting, when he told his new sensei off for being unprofessional and obnoxiously cheerful, which was 'unbecoming of a ninja'.

Sensei laughs, obviously remembering the same thing. Then he sobers. "Kakashi, I took you on as a student because I liked you, not for my legacy or whatever else you think. I never even saw you fight until the first time we trained together. It didn't matter to me. I wanted the _person_ , not the prodigy."

That's obviously nonsense, because what else is there, when you take the shinobi away? A severely dysfunctional loner and a disgraced family name. Kakashi had never dared to ask sensei how he felt when, barely a month after their new team formed, the Hatake clan was plunged into disgrace. And he's certainly not going to ask now.

Sensei pats his head, looking very sad, but Kakashi doesn't know what to say to make him feel better.

"Much as it goes against my better judgment, I definitely don't want you hurting yourself, so I'll give you a suggestion about this mission of yours."

Kakashi perks up immediately, which of course just makes sensei look sadder.

"Considering you spent less than a year at the Academy, I assume your father taught you some of the shinobi arts at home?"

"Yes. He claims that I could make the tiger seal before I could talk."

"Of course you could. Well, you've gotten a little out of shape these last few weeks; why don't you ask him to help with that?"

"That's a great idea!" Kakashi enthuses. "I'll ask him right now!"

Sensei catches him before he makes it off the bed.

"It's the middle of the night, Kakashi. It can wait until morning."

"But—"

"You won't be able to perform optimally if you have insufficient rest."

"…fine."

"That's my boy," sensei says, giving him a little smile, and he ruffles Kakashi's hair again before he gets up to leave. "Goodnight, Kakashi."

"Goodnight, sensei," Kakashi says, though he sits up for a long time, plotting how he's going to convince his father to train with him.

* * *

Despite his long night, Kakashi is up with the sun, taking an interest in his room for the first time since his arrival. He's embarrassed to realize that he's been wearing sensei's shirts this whole time, though at least someone had paired the over-sized things with shorts, even if he's pretty sure they aren't his.

He doesn't have to consider how he might train in them at least, because there's a closet full of his own clothes, clean and neatly folded. Since he only owns uniforms, there's no problem finding something to train in. Until he puts them on and realizes they're a bit too big.

Well, nothing a little extra bandaging won't fix.

The first thing he does, though, is take a kunai and cut the extra fabric from the neck of the shirts. The resulting collars are a little uneven, but it's not too noticeable. And then he bundles up the masks and kicks them to the very back of the closet.

No one else is stirring, so he probably has time for a bath. He can't remember the last time he had one, which is a good sign that it's been too long.

When he's sufficiently clean, he hesitates before approaching the mirror. Rebuking himself for being ridiculous, he looks at his reflection.

It's been a very long time since he's seen his own face. Without the mask, his cheekbones stand out sharply in his pale, thin face. Two ordinary eyes look back at him, which is even stranger than the lack of a mask. His hair is getting wild, overshadowing his face and making him look even smaller and younger than he is, which is already disturbing enough.

Maybe he should cut it.

Once his hitai-ate is securely tied (it takes two tries, because he automatically puts it over his left eye the first time), his hair is mostly out of his eyes, so he decides to leave it. He thinks it makes him look a bit like his older self, and therefore less like a helpless child, even if the comparison is only in his own mind.

By the time all that's done, there's enough light to read by and it's time to wake the layabouts.

Jiraiya is off on a mission, no doubt desperately needed on the front. It will only be a matter of time before sensei is sent out as well.

Kakashi pauses at sensei's door. He was up late, worrying about Kakashi. Perhaps it's better to let him sleep. What if he has a mission this afternoon? Kakashi won't be there to protect him.

Kakashi moves past the door without knocking.

His father is lying in bed, staring at the ceiling.

"Is it time to train?" Kakashi asks, and has a sudden memory of asking this man this same question a dozen, a hundred times before. His father had always treated him like a capable shinobi, and a younger Kakashi eagerly sought to train together whenever they were both in the house.

He's noticed that his father seems to lose track of where he is and what he's doing these days, but he seems to respond well to this return to routine, sitting up and smiling.

Kakashi guiltily hopes that he won't notice anything is odd about this sudden interest in training, unlike the weeks prior where Kakashi didn't speak to him or acknowledge him in any way.

Unfortunately, it's not to be. "You're—" His father doesn't finish the sentence, just gestures to his face.

Kakashi remembers his own bare face, and stares at the ground, his ears red. There just isn't a good way to say 'yes, I was embarrassed to see your face every day in the mirror, but I've decided to stop acting like a spoiled brat' so he's just going to pretend none of that ever happened.

After a moment, his father apparently decides to do the same, because he stands and starts looking for his clothes.

Kakashi decides to scout out a likely training place, and realizes that he still has no idea where he is. It must be a fairly large compound, because none of the bedrooms are next to each other, and there are hallways in every direction leading to rooms Kakashi has never even seen.

Sensei isn't from a clan, he remembers, and the apartment he'll share with Kushina one day was modest. Jiraiya obviously isn't from a clan, he doesn't even have a family name. Perhaps this land belongs to the Senju?

Back at home, Kakashi and his father always trained outside, but this place appears to be in Konoha proper, instead of on the outskirts like most of the major clan properties. The view out the windows is just more buildings, nothing flat and open enough for training. Some investigation unearths a well-appointed dojo just around the corner from the kitchen.

"There you are," his father says, and for the first time since Kakashi's arrival in this time he looks like a ninja.

Kakashi surprises himself when, for a moment, he wants to smile. Well, why shouldn't he be happy? This is something he's always wanted, to train with his father again. But the feeling trickles away, and he solemnly points out the dojo he's discovered.

"Hmm," his father says, and then gestures for Kakashi to begin warming up.

Sensei finds them a few hours later, poking his head in and insisting that they break for lunch.

He frowns at Kakashi. "I hope you're not overdoing it. You're still recovering."

Kakashi, whose vision is swimming with grey spots, doesn't trust his voice for a reply. He shrugs and ducks out after his father.

He makes an effort to appear normal through lunch, since sensei is watching him like a hawk, but fortunately it's normal for him to be silent and introspective, and he has a lot of experience hiding illness and injury, even in this timeline.

"The Hokage asked to see me this afternoon," sensei says, as the meal is winding down.

The lunch is like a lead weight as Kakashi remembers his thoughts from this morning. Are they sending sensei away already?

He berates himself immediately; he's becoming far too dependent on the man. His father is doing much better, and if this training idea works out, it's time for them to start thinking about moving back home. Sensei is doing most of the cooking and insisting on things like bath and bedtimes, but Kakashi can manage that himself easily enough. Honestly, given that they haven't gone on a mission in weeks, it's a wonder sensei has been able to stay even this long.

"Of course," Kakashi says, after too long a pause.

"I'd like you to take a nap this afternoon, Kakashi," sensei says, eyeing him critically. "I think you might be pushing yourself too hard, too fast."

"Hmm," Kakashi says.

Sensei gives him a look, but he can hardly ignore a summons from the Hokage, and eventually he leaves.

As soon as he's sure he's gone, Kakashi goes to his father's side. The man is staring out the window, lost in his own dark thoughts again.

"Are you coming, father?"

"Where?"

"Training, remember?"

The man looks around, frowning vaguely. "Where's that other fellow?"

"He had to see the Hokage," Kakashi reminds him.

"Oh. You said training?"

"Yes, we were training, and then we had to stop for lunch."

"Training." A certain sharpness returns to his father's eyes, and he gestures for Kakashi to follow him.

And if Kakashi has to sneak off to empty his lunch mid-way through the session, what sensei doesn't know won't hurt him.

* * *

Kakashi is bathed, changed and preparing dinner by the time sensei returns, both to suggest obedience to sensei's instructions and to show that he's capable of managing on his own. But sensei seems preoccupied, and doesn't even notice when Kakashi barks his bruised shin on the table leg and can't quite suppress a small pain noise.

"I have something I need to tell you. Both of you," sensei says.

Kakashi immediately puts down his chopsticks, regretting eating so well. He was still feeling a little guilty about the afternoon's disobedience and was eating enough to make up for it.

Now he's bracing himself to hear who has died. He racks his brain for anyone that might be important to him in this time, but he's fairly certain everyone but sensei is still shunning him. Unless…

He feels cold all over. Jiraiya. It has to be.

"Kakashi, are you alright?" sensei asks, and Kakashi has the sense that this is not the first time he's been asked this. Sensei is holding his cold hands, and his touch is like fire, and Kakashi just manages to turn his head in time to throw up on the floor instead of on sensei.

"Whatever you're thinking, it's not that bad," sensei says, once Kakashi is done and has had a glass of water. "I'm sorry, I had no idea you would react that way."

Kakashi casts a quick glance at his father, but he's having one of his less-attentive moments and appears not to have noticed his son's display, thankfully.

"I'll just go clean this up," Kakashi says, ducking out from under sensei's arm before he can protest.

He takes a moment to splash some water on his face. He really needs to get a hold of himself, because he's pretty sure five-year-olds who've never even been out of the village don't have this much PTSD. Someone is going to get suspicious.

By the time he gets back with some wet rags, sensei has already cleaned up the mess. Snuck out to the bathroom the moment Kakashi was out of sight, probably.

Kakashi sinks into his chair with an annoyed sigh, and drops the rags on sensei's plate, which he is appropriately mortified by a few seconds later. He's acting like a stupid little kid throwing a tantrum.

Sensei flashes him a small, very amused smile before he's all business again. "There's no easy way to say this, so… I'm very sorry to tell you, but your home has been destroyed."

That shocks Kakashi right out of his sulk. "What?"

Even his father seems to be paying attention.

"It seems to be… well, it was probably arson," sensei says apologetically. "The police are looking into it."

"Was nothing salvageable?" Kakashi asks numbly. He'd never been back to the house after… that day, moving into a tiny dump of an apartment over sensei's strenuous protests, but he'd always known it was there. And… he has things there. His personal jutsu library, a picture of his mother, his first weapons…

Sensei is shaking his head. "They thought they might get the fire under control, but then it must have reached a storage room, because the house just… exploded. It's a crater now."

Kakashi clenches his hands in his lap, watches his fingers turn white, and tries to compose himself. It's only things, after all. He's never been one to get overly attached to things—well, except his father's tanto, and that's here already, he saw it during training.

Kind of a mixed blessing, actually, but it's obviously important to his father, so Kakashi will try to be grateful.

Sensei is looking at him, so Kakashi forces himself to relax his hands. It's only things.

His father is visibly devastated, and Kakashi immediately slides out of his chair to take the one beside him. After a brief internal debate, he pats his father's arm, hopefully in a comforting way.

"Don't worry, father. It's only things. You're here, and you're not hurt, so that's what really matters." Then Kakashi remembers that he's supposed to be acting dependent. "And me. I'm here, too."

His father grasps his hand tightly, so Kakashi is going to count this a tentative success.

Though perhaps not, because sensei is still looking troubled.

"Also…"

Kakashi can't help tensing all over. What else can have happened?

"I'm being sent on a mission."

This isn't a surprise, Kakashi reminds himself. "Will I have permission to go on missions?" Kakashi asks.

"With me?" sensei asks.

"No, in the village. I know you're supposed to supervise, but it's only D-ranks. Glorified chores."

Sensei just blinks at him.

"We're going to need somewhere to live," Kakashi reminds him. It will be a bit of a challenge to support two people with only D-rank missions. If he can squeeze in three a day, that should be enough for a cheap apartment, and food if they're not too picky about what they eat. Before he had an orphan's allowance to supplement his income, which obviously isn't applicable here.

Sensei appears to be mentally counting to ten. "Kakashi. You are not to go on any missions without me. You are going to stay here, and someone will bring you food. The only thing I want you to worry about is getting better. Jiraiya is due for leave soon, and he's going to take it here in the village if I have to drag him back by the ear."

Well now Kakashi is _very_ curious whose house this is, but it doesn't seem to be the time to ask. He does follow sensei around as he gets ready, blowing off a potential evening training session, because sensei's going to be out in the field, outside Kakashi's influence. Intellectually, Kakashi knows what an amazing ninja sensei is, that it took the Kyuubi itself to take him down, but… he still worries.

And feels bad about it, because he should be reserving all of his worry for his father. What if something happens to him while Kakashi is off hovering over sensei?

Sensei looks like he wants to say something—probably tell Kakashi to stop clinging—but in the end he doesn't say a word, indulges Kakashi's childish behavior, and hugs him goodbye. Three hugs now.

Kakashi isn't sure if the farewell is a good omen or bad.

But he does know, when sensei returns, he's going to be _much_ better. He's not going to be deadweight any longer.

* * *

Training is difficult at first. Kakashi is weak from his tantrum, and makes a mental note not to starve himself again. It's weeks before he starts gaining any significant weight back, and the lost muscle mass takes even longer.

It takes all his discipline to keep himself going, but he manages.

The mornings aren't too bad. He's always sore, but it's a relief to work off the soreness, and he remembers this warm-up routine from performing it practically every day for more than thirty years. Basic kata never really change, and it's easy enough to explain away any clumsiness in adjusting to this smaller, weaker body as lingering effects of his self-indulgence… though that's not always just an excuse.

But after lunch—which Kakashi strictly enforces, his recent experience driving home the importance of proper nutrition—they do specialty work. Specifically, his father's trademark kenjutsu.

Now this, Kakashi has not used since he really was a kid, and this was before his Sharingan-induced photographic memory for jutsu. He just doesn't remember it.

And his father, justifiably, doesn't understand why.

It's a tense few weeks, with many late night practice sessions alone in his room after he's sure his father is asleep, but to their mutual relief Kakashi finally gets the routine down.

Ninjutsu is even worse. Kakashi thinks he remembers knowing ninjutsu at this age, and he graduated from the Academy so he must know at least the three basics, but it just won't work. His chakra reserves are obviously much smaller than what he'll have as an adult, but Kakashi can barely manage a single henge before he's drained all his resources.

His years of dealing with Obito's eye have given him an almost unparalleled sense for when he is dangerously straining his chakra reserves, and he doesn't dare push it. At this age, he could permanently damage his ability to channel chakra. His father, through no fault of his own, doesn't know his son has such finely honed awareness, and continues to urge him to use his chakra, because reserves don't expand unless you work at them.

It reminds Kakashi a little of teaching Sakura, actually; she always thought she'd reached her limit, right until her teammates needed her and she really tried.

But he's no Sakura, so he fakes it, and his father thinks he's just slow, and honor is satisfied on all sides.

It's hard work, but Kakashi's not afraid of hard work, and anyway, the rewards are so immediate and obvious that it is absolutely worth it.

Because he can see his father improving every day.

The stretches where he just sits and stares off into space are less frequent and shorter, he starts talking again, expresses preferences for certain foods (which Kakashi writes down so he doesn't forget), starts noticing when Kakashi is looking untidy.

It's wonderful, and Kakashi hates to take anything less than complete enjoyment from this development, but the truth is that he doesn't quite know what to do now. Of course his father is one of the most important people in his life, but he doesn't have that many memories of the man besides that last, horrid day. His father was— _is_ —one of the most skilled jounin in the village, so he was always off on missions, protecting Konoha, and they didn't actually spend that much time together unless they were training.

And Kakashi is finally ready to admit that they can't spend all day, every day training, especially now that his father is more aware and therefore more likely to notice when Kakashi is faking.

The question is, what to do instead? Somehow he doubts his father will be impressed by sensei's preferred past-times of eating ramen until he can't move, or teasing Kakashi until he stomps off, or the dozen other annoying and pointless things sensei fills his days with.

He finally hits on a plan, and sneaks off one night to pilfer some jutsu scrolls from the ANBU library. They use the same basic security as he remembers, which makes him embarrassed on ANBU's behalf, but it's convenient because it makes his job easy.

"Tousan," he says over breakfast, "I found some scrolls."

"Oh?"

"I was thinking, maybe we could create a new jutsu!"

His father actually smiles at his enthusiasm. "Creating jutsu is very difficult, Kakashi. Many talented shinobi never manage it."

"I'm sure we can manage."

"This evening, then. Training comes first."

Kakashi slacks off a little on morning and afternoon training, impatient to see how his father responds to his idea, but his father seems amused by his lack of discipline, which is satisfying all on its own.

Even so, he practically pushes the man into a chair after a dinner slightly burned by Kakashi's inattention.

"Alright, alright Kakashi, I'm looking."

He frowns a little as he reads through the scrolls, Kakashi trying to at least put on a show that he's reading, too.

"Well this is certainly an… interesting combination," his father says at last. "Can I ask what you thought you were researching?"

Kakashi supposes it does look a bit random, a collection of advanced lightning and wind jutsu, and an extremely dry treatise on the theoretical shape of chakra in many common jutsu. "I just grabbed some stuff," Kakashi lies, trying to look embarrassed by this confession. Actually, he's mostly relieved that none of them say 'Property of ANBU' or anything like that.

Now for the hard part. He's taught Chidori before, not that he cares to dwell on that memory, but never while trying to make it look like it was the other person's idea.

"I was curious about how you infuse chakra into your kenjutsu…" he begins.


	3. Chapter 3

Warnings: One incident of major(ish?) character death, and no take-backs this time.

* * *

Kakashi's sixth birthday comes and goes, along with a chuunin exam that he never even hears about, and he's feeling cautiously pleased. He's hit a plateau in his efforts to teach Chidori, because he can't figure out how to explain the concept without bringing up the Rasengan, which he definitely shouldn't know about, but it's fine because his father has totally embraced the idea of research, and the evenings are filled with quiet pursuits.

Maybe he'll convince sensei to join them when he returns, and try and bring the conversation around to the Rasengan. He's not sure when, precisely, sensei invented it, but he has to at least have the concept by now.

Despite a little (mostly good-natured) ribbing about the sounds it makes, Chidori is (or will be) a respected assassination jutsu. It's exactly the kind of thing that can start rehabilitating his father's reputation. And if this works, Kakashi can start introducing some of his other ideas to the village, through his father. He has a lot of experience, after all, and no one's going to take him seriously the way he looks now. This way, everybody wins.

There's a knock at the door, and Kakashi abandons training mid-kata to sprint for the front entrance. It has to be sensei. No one ever visits them, and only sensei could believe that they would send _Jiraiya_ away from the front to tend to a disgraced lunatic and his crazy son.

He throws the door open, then freezes.

He doesn't know this person.

The chuunin frowns at him. "The Hokage wants to see you."

"Me?" The way he is now, what could the Hokage possibly want with him?

The chuunin must agree, because she rolls her eyes and huffs. "I'm just the messenger."

"Well… alright," Kakashi says. He _is_ a ninja, so it's not impossible that the Hokage should want him for something. Maybe _he's_ being sent to the front. "Let me just tell my father where I'm going."

He doesn't miss the chuunin's sneer at the mention of his father, and glares at her.

"You may wait here," he says, shutting the door in her face.

His father doesn't seem to think it odd that the Hokage wants to see him, which could mean anything at all, and Kakashi strips out of his sweaty clothes and puts on a clear uniform. He doesn't have time for anything more than splashing his face with water, but it will just have to do.

The chuunin is gone when he opens the door again, but Kakashi ignores the slight and heads for the Hokage Tower. He's not especially familiar with this part of Konoha, but once he gets up on the rooftops it's easy enough to find the nearest patrol route and follow it until the Tower is in sight.

"Genin Hatake," he tells the Hokage's secretary, proud that he doesn't stumble over the title.

He has to sit and wait, because the Hokage's meeting is running late, so Kakashi swings his legs and considers how to introduce his lightning-style shadow clones without admitting he knows anything about advanced elemental manipulation or shadow clones. Maybe he should cultivate some hero-worship for the Nidaime, just in case.

The door opens and a number of important people file out, or at least Kakashi assumes so, because Danzou is one of them. He meets the man's eyes for a moment, but controls his reaction ruthlessly. In his current circumstances, he shouldn't know who Danzou is, or recognize the extremely subtle threat that he exudes. It's probably best to give him the defiant look of a child who believes in his own immortality, but he doesn't trust his self-control that much, so he looks at the floor and hopes it looks a child's natural submission to an obvious authority figure.

"Oh, it's the Hatake brat," someone not Danzou says.

Kakashi clenches his jaw, but otherwise ignores it. He's avoided most of this crap by being shut up in the house all the time, but he's a fucking adult and he's not going to be drawn into this.

He stands up, giving his full attention to smoothing the creases out of his pants.

"How's your father?" someone else asks, derisively.

"He is doing quite well," Kakashi says, as politely as he can manage. "Thank you for your concern." Then he ducks past them and into the Hokage's office before anyone else can say anything.

"Ah, there you are," the Hokage says.

Kakashi isn't sure why he's here, so he salutes and says nothing. He can't even remember if he's met this man before in this timeline.

"I just wanted to see how you're doing."

Kakashi blinks. "Sir?" Tsunade used to check up on him constantly, but… the circumstances were completely different.

"I've had a letter from your sensei," the Hokage says wryly. "He is not pleased that you are being left to your own devices."

"I'm staying with my father," Kakashi reminds him, though of course that is significantly more effort than when he lived alone. Not that he's going to tell the Hokage that. Or complain, even to himself, when the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

"Quite. Well, he is concerned."

Kakashi tries to stand as straight as possible, grateful that he at least _looks_ much better than he did. And his father shouldn't have anything bad to say about Kakashi's diligence, if anyone bothers to ask him, and Kakashi has been mostly successful at hiding any panic attacks or other problems.

"He seems to think I let you graduate too early."

"What!?" Kakashi shouts, his indignation overwhelming his resolve to watch his words carefully. Just… sensei said _that_? Why?

"Calm down," the Hokage says, which makes Kakashi want to shout at him again, but he exercises a little self-control and clamps his jaw shut. "But you seem to be doing well."

"Yes, I am."

"No problems?"

"No, sir."

"Hmm."

Kakashi and the Hokage stare at each other.

"Well, everything seems in order," the Hokage says finally. "I'll reassure your sensei. He's been threatening to come back and check on you personally."

Kakashi blinks. "He wants to… abandon his post?"

"Everyone reacts differently to the responsibility of a genin," the Hokage says, not sounding overly concerned by this blatant insubordination. "And he's young himself."

Not sure how to respond, Kakashi salutes again and leaves. Well, that was an entirely pointless trip.

* * *

It takes Kakashi almost an hour to get back to the house, because he has two panic attacks on the way. He hadn't been thinking earlier, but this is the first time he's left his father alone for any length of time since sensei left, and the last time he returned home, well…

He's shaking as he opens the door, on the verge of panic _again_ , when his father comes out of the kitchen, smiling.

"I made dinner," he says. "Well, sort of. What did the Hokage want?"

Kakashi bursts into tears, which is mortifying and causes his father totally unnecessary worry. He passes it off as upset that sensei thinks he isn't a good ninja, which he is actually still pretty angry about, and lets his father think he's overreacting to the simple criticism.

They eat together, and it's burned and kind of gross but Kakashi pretends to like it. Afterwards, Kakashi washes the dishes and heads for the couch where they do their jutsu research, but his father stops him with a hand on his arm.

"Kakashi." He pauses.

This is the first time his father has initiated any change in their routine. Kakashi forces himself not to freak out, because his father isn't stupid and is definitely going to notice there's something wrong with him if he does that.

"I'm glad that you've taken the loss of all your things so well… I never thought you'd be left with just the clothes on your back…" He trails off.

Kakashi is starting to get alarmed. "I have you," he says, probably too firmly.

"Ah, yes, so you do. But I thought you might want something else, something a little more, er, tangible isn't quite right, but…" He gets lost in his thoughts again, but this time he breaks himself out of it. "Anyway, you're young, but you've been such a diligent student lately, I thought you might be interested in this."

He puts a scroll on the table, which Kakashi recognizes instantly. It's the clan summoning contract.

He'd never even considered that it might have been destroyed in the fire, and the relief that it wasn't is so all-consuming that it's hard to breathe for a minute.

"What's that?" he asks, as innocently as he can.

"This has been in our clan for generations," his father says. "It's our legacy."

He keeps talking, but Kakashi tunes it out. As the only child of a once-great clan, he's heard the legacy speech enough to know when to nod without actually having to listen. Last time around, he found the scroll among his father's things and taught himself to summon.

This is an experience they never had the chance to share.

"Are you listening, Kakashi?"

"Of course. I understand what a big responsibility this is."

"Right, well, I certainly don't expect you to be summoning anything any time soon, but when our clan compound was destroyed… it reminded me how few things we have left to connect us to the past. I thought you might want to be a part of this."

"Oh, yes, absolutely," Kakashi says. He's already counting the days—okay, probably years—before he can see his pack again.

His father forms the familiar seals of the Kuchiyose no Jutsu, and a pair of enormous wolfhounds that Kakashi only very dimly remembers appear.

"Sakumo. It's been a while."

"Too long, my friends. I'd like my son to sign the contract."

Two pairs of canine eyes fix on him, and Kakashi refuses to be cowed even though they're both taller than he is. Certainly his father's summons are a bit more… impressive… than Kakashi's, but he wouldn't trade a single one of his quirky pack, not even for such fierce warriors.

"He's still just a pup," one of them says.

"I'm a ninja," Kakashi says, a little insulted.

He gets a face full of dog breath as one of them whuffs out a dog laugh. He wrinkles his nose, but stands still while they inspect him all over, poking him with their cold noses and almost knocking him over once or twice.

"Very well." "I have a good feeling about this one."

That seems to be all there is to say, and Kakashi is soon clumsily signing his name and leaving a tiny handprint on the scroll. Unlike his own pack, these summons don't stick around.

The scroll is stored away with due reverence, and now Kakashi's not sure what to do. "Are you going to teach me to summon now?" he asks.

"Absolutely not. Maybe in ten years."

Kakashi frowns at his father's back. Ten years!? "I saw you summon them," he says. "I could do it."

His father isn't listening. "We should celebrate."

This is new. "You know we can't go out," Kakashi says cautiously.

His father sets his jaw. "Why not?" he says, marching for the door.

Kakashi stares after him, open-mouthed, then has to run to catch up. "But—"

"I'm still a part of this village, I shouldn't have to hide in someone else's house."

His father refuses to say anything else on the matter, and Kakashi is left half-running behind his quick strides, trying not to notice that everyone they pass stops to stare. His father hasn't been seen in public in months, they probably thought he died or something.

Not yet, and not ever, if Kakashi has anything to say about it. He glares at everyone who dares to look at them, and especially at the owner of the dango shop when he has to give his father some money.

They go and sit on a bench and eat dango together, and even though Kakashi hates dango it's easily one of the best moments of his life.

* * *

The next morning, they have a visitor.

Danzou.

Kakashi has no idea what to make of this development.

"I see you're out and about again," Danzou says in greeting, which immediately puts Kakashi even more on edge.

He hadn't noticed Danzou noticing them last night, and why would Danzou even care? He's sure Danzou hated his father, he certainly brought it up often enough during Kakashi's ANBU training, and Danzou has much more pressing concerns than a forcibly-retired jounin and an off-duty genin.

"I hear that you have a very talented son."

Was Kakashi somehow transported to an alternate universe when he died?

His father looks even more confused than Kakashi is.

"We were going to train," he says, hoping Danzou will take the hint and go away.

No such luck. "Oh? And what do you do? Have you learned your kata yet?"

Kakashi can't help being annoyed by that. Danzou has to know he's a genin, and he passed the same test everyone else did.

Since it doesn't look like the man is going anywhere, Kakashi decides he might as well start training.

His father isn't reacting well to the intrusion, and he's as scattered as he was when they first started.

Kakashi makes the warm-up last as long as possible, hoping Danzou will get bored, but he shows every evidence of having nothing better to do with his day, which Kakashi _knows_ isn't the case.

He finally directs his father to an out of the way corner, coaxing until he takes a few half-hearted jabs at a punching bag, and takes himself to the middle of the floor.

He's confused and angry and frustrated, but whatever is going on he definitely can't break down in front of Danzou, so he throws himself into his kata, the basic one from the Academy, the two his father taught him and a favorite one of Gai's, then when he still can't settle he grabs a wooden sword and practices kenjutsu until his legs give out on him.

And all that time, he can feel Danzou's eyes on him.

When Kakashi collapses, Danzou goes to talk to his father, and Kakashi selfishly enjoys the respite. Five minutes, then he'll go rescue his father from Danzou's poison.

But although Kakashi can't hear what they're saying, they're giving every appearance of having a civil conversation, even if his father is obviously having some trouble focusing.

That just makes Kakashi more suspicious. What is Danzou up to?

He's theoretically supposed to be practicing ninjutsu, but he's not sure what would be worse: showing Danzou his weakness, or accidentally performing an advanced technique. He's been working on exercises to build up his chakra reserves, but he learned them in ANBU and Danzou is more observant than his father is.

He can just practice summoning instead. There's no risk of overdoing it because it's way beyond him right now, and there's still some benefit from forming the seals and ordering his chakra.

His father's concern is understandable, if he were really six, but Kakashi has studied the technique until it's like breathing, and it's saved his life more than once when his opponent thought him unconscious or defeated. He knows it better than any other jutsu, can perform it under virtually any condition.

It's not until his tiny puddle of chakra spirals out into the perfectly executed jutsu that Kakashi realizes he's an idiot.

* * *

He wakes up feeling like Gamabunta is sitting on him.

Ah, chakra exhaustion. His constant companion.

He tries to move, and manages to kick something soft.

Before Kakashi can properly wonder about it, his father jolts awake, groaning as his neck cramps from the awkward slouch he was sleeping in.

Kakashi stares. It takes him a long moment to remember that his father is still alive, though that doesn't explain what he's doing sitting at Kakashi's bedside. Sensei used to do that, and Gai sometimes, but…

"Kakashi! You're awake!"

The surprises keep coming, because Kakashi is pulled into a painful hug as his whole body protests the movement. Four. Or should he start over, a different count for each person?

"Sorry, I'll get the medic, wait right there!" he calls over his shoulder, half-running out of the room.

Kakashi smiles ruefully, he's not going anywhere for a long time.

The door opens again. "Kakashi."

His whole body tries to tense, but he's just too exhausted to react properly.

Danzou smiles at him.

Kakashi tries to tense again.

"Remarkable," Danzou says. "You have the discipline and skill of a shinobi twice your age, and now summoning?"

This is eerily like his recruitment into ANBU. Next Danzou will comment on his promise as an assassin, and how impressive it is that he's already developed his own jutsu for it.

Except that that hasn't happened yet. So it can't be worse than that.

Danzou grips Kakashi's chin in his hand, too tight, and turns his head left, then right. "And such a pretty face."

Okay, it can get worse. This time Kakashi manages to tense, for all the zero good that does him.

"Have you considered—"

The door flies open, and a medic is propelled inside, squawking indignantly.

Danzou releases him and steps back casually.

"Shut up and treat my son," his father says, standing in the doorway and glaring daggers at the medic. "And you, what are you doing here?"

"I'm just leaving," Danzou says, with an oily smile.

The medic starts protesting, but his father bullies him into checking Kakashi over.

"How are you feeling, Kakashi?"

Like his whole body is on fire. "Okay."

"What did Danzou-sama want?"

"Nothing."

"Uh-huh. He's been hanging around all week, waiting for to wake up."

"All week?"

"You've been out for ten days." His father looked away. "Danzou was the one who brought you here. I'm afraid I… panicked."

Kakashi wants to pat his hand, but he can't make his hand move. "It's okay," he says. "I'm fine now."

His father starts to cry. "I'm so glad you're awake. I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to you."

And that will definitely give Kakashi a few sleepless nights. Desperate to change the subject, he blurts out the first thing that comes to mind. "What happened?"

His father glares at him. "I told you not to try summoning anything for a reason!"

Kakashi shrinks back into the pillow. Right, he probably shouldn't have brought that up.

"I don't know whether I should be furious or proud. I can't believe you learned how to summon just from watching me do it one time."

"What do you mean? I actually summoned something?"

"A puppy. Only a day old, probably got the fright of his life, poor thing. Once I… calmed down a little, I summoned someone to take him home."

"Oops?"

"You're not to try that again until I give you explicit permission. Summoning is a jounin-level technique."

"Yes, sir."

"…it was still damn impressive."

* * *

The next time Kakashi wakes up, the hospital is in an uproar.

"It's an invasion!" "A bijuu is loose!" "It's that traitor!"

Stumbling out of his room, bracing his weight on the wall, Kakashi hones in on that last one. If they were being invaded or attacked by a bijuu, he thinks he would know. He's lived through them both more than once, after all. "What traitor?"

The speaker, an older ninja whose injures probably forced him into retirement, sneers when he sees Kakashi. "Who do you think, Hatake filth?"

Kakashi is too shocked to be bothered by the insult. His father? He doesn't remember anything like this! "What? What's he doing?"

It's quickly evident that the man doesn't actually know, and Kakashi ignores the vitriol as he looks around for someone who might know something. He'd go himself, but his legs are trembling and he's frankly surprised he made it as far as he has.

"What are you doing out of bed?" a nurse demands, grabbing him by his collar.

"What's going on?"

"Nothing that concerns you, now get back in bed!"

"I won't! Take me outside, I have to know!"

"You aren't going any—ouch!"

Kakashi kicks the back of her knee and she drops him, swearing. He lurches to the other side of the hallway, then has to stop and catch his breath. He's never going to get out of the hospital at this rate.

Then he hears his name.

A pair of ANBU, very junior members if he's any judge (which he is) are questioning patients, looking for Kakashi.

Some people would find this unsettling, but Kakashi's only thought is that they're his ticket out of here.

"I'm the Hatake boy!" he shouts, waving his free hand.

"Come with us."

When it's obvious that Kakashi isn't going anywhere fast, the taller one scoops him up and they Shunshin away.

"What's going on?" one of them asks.

Kakashi grinds his teeth in frustration. That's his line. "How should I know?"

No one answers him, and they stop on a rooftop just across from the main entrance to ANBU headquarters, the one that's ostensibly an open-air market. Not that he's supposed to know that.

He cranes his neck, trying to see everything at once. He can hear loud crashes. "Is someone fighting?"

He gets his answer when two figures crash through a market stall, and the air is thick with deadly intent and chakra, signs of a battle between elite shinobi. One is his father.

The other is Danzou.

"What the hell?" Kakashi asks.

"We were hoping you could tell us. As far as anyone knows, Hatake just walked up to him in the street and attacked him, screaming about him being a traitor to Konoha."

Well of course Danzou _is_ a traitor to Konoha, but Kakashi can't imagine how his father might have known that. Had it started so soon?

"You don't have any idea what this is about?"

"No," Kakashi says, as another building collapses. "Isn't someone going to stop them?"

"Are you kidding? Like who?"

Of course, Kakashi thinks. All the village's best shinobi are days away, fighting in the war. The power and killing intent being thrown around right now is nothing compared to Madara, more on par with Obito or the Akatsuki, but neither of these ANBU has lived through anything like that.

"Where is the Hokage?"

"He's inspecting the border outposts today. He received our message, and he should be back soon."

Kakashi can't see the fighting anymore. "Take me over there, I want to know what's going on."

"Are you joking?"

Kakashi struggles until he's put down, crawls across the roof and carefully shimmies down a drainpipe.

"Kid's as crazy as his old man," one of the ANBU says, but neither come after him, so Kakashi ignores it.

Luck is with him, because by the time he's pulled himself upright against the wall, the fight has moved to the street right in front of him. It's obviously been going on for some time, because both men's faces are drawn and exhausted.

Danzou is younger and stronger than Kakashi remembers him, his own war days not too far distant, but his father has been training almost non-stop for weeks, and he's in prime condition.

His father is sparking, his whole body emitting electricity in a jutsu Kakashi has never seen before, which is obviously proving to be an inconvenience to Danzou. They trade blows, then jutsu, then Danzou barely steps back in time to avoid being stabbed.

That's when they see Kakashi peering around the corner.

Danzou smiles nastily.

"You stay away from my son!"

Kakashi blinks and misses it. One moment they're at a stalemate, and the next his father has his tanto buried to the hilt in Danzou's chest, the elder's eyes already starting to glaze over.

And then black ink streams out of his mouth and over his skin, a seal being activated.

His father starts to step back, but Danzou grabs his arms, his whole body jerking as electricity courses through him.

Kakashi falls into the open street, keeping his feet by sheer force of will, and if he'd had even a smidgeon of chakra he'd have tried the Hiraishin and damn the consequences.

And then Danzou, his father, and half the street explode, the blast sending Kakashi flying backwards, and he's probably going to break his neck because he doesn't have the strength to brace himself, and isn't that just a fitting end to this day, this life…

And he lands right in sensei's arms.

"What? How?" Kakashi asks.

"I came as soon as I heard you were in the hospital. I met my relief on the way," sensei says, adjusting his grip to hold him a little more securely. "It looks like I was just in time."


	4. Chapter 4

Kakashi spends the rest of his recuperation in his hospital bed, obeying all medical instructions to the letter.

He can hardly avoid it, with sensei hovering over him every waking (and probably sleeping) moment.

Besides, that's the deal: if he cooperates with the medics, sensei keeps him updated on everything that's happening.

And there's a lot happening.

The ANBU uncover a massive base under Konoha, where Danzou has been training his own private army right under the Hokage's nose.

And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Danzou kept extensive records, detailing his clandestine dealings with all kinds of shady groups, his plans for the future of Konoha… and his orchestration of the Third Shinobi World War. It's all right there on scrolls, which would be unbelievably arrogant on anyone else, but instead is just Danzou being Danzou.

How he started sowing the seeds of dissent.

How he learned that Konoha's White Fang was growing suspicious.

How he deliberately fed him false information and sent him on a one-way mission.

How he raged when his carefully orchestrated plans fell apart and Konoha took the blame for starting the war.

On and on it went, right up to his plans to recruit Kakashi, only days before his death.

"I guess father must have overheard him," Kakashi says.

"You knew about these plans?" sensei asks, horrified.

The Sandaime takes all these scrolls and plans and sordid agreements and rats out everyone else's secret societies, and in a few short weeks, the whole world is reeling with shock, because the war is over. What were they fighting about, the Sandaime asks everyone, gently cajoling. Shouldn't we all be working to get our own houses in order?

And wonder of wonders, it works. It's too soon after the last war, and no one really wants another one, so they draft some more treaties that no one's going to take seriously in a few years and… go home.

It's all tied up so neatly that no one seems to care that, once again, Kakashi is an orphan. Oh, this time his father is lauded as a hero, and his name is carved into the Memorial Stone, but… he's still dead.

So Kakashi doesn't fight his restriction to the hospital as much as he might have.

He absorbs all the news quietly, his body recovers, and he tries to avoid feeling anything about anything.

* * *

Eventually he is declared well enough to go home, and he spends the first hour and a half sobbing hysterically in his father's room while sensei tries to console him.

"Sorry," he mutters, after he finally calms down.

"You're sorry," sensei says flatly.

"For being so irrational."

"There is nothing irrational about being sad that your father died."

"He's a hero," Kakashi reminds him. "He saved the village, maybe the whole world, stopped a war… a death worthy of a shinobi."

"It's okay to still be sad."

* * *

The next morning, Kakashi goes down to breakfast and Jiraiya is there, eating whatever mystery concoction sensei is calling food today.

"Why are you here?" Kakashi asks, debating between the yellowish thing and the blackish thing.

"This happens to be my house," Jiraiya says, passing Kakashi a ration bar under the table.

"Really?" Kakashi looks around, observing the house with this new insight in mind. It does show elements of Jiraiya's style, in that it's opulent to the point of gaudiness, but does this mean Jiraiya is from a clan after all? Ninja housing in Konoha comes in two basic options: apartment or clan compound.

Jiraiya looks embarrassed. "Yeah, well, after the war when I finally had a bit of money, I decided I wanted a house, so I convinced my team to pool our money together and build this. And then Orochimaru refused to live in it, and Tsunade… left, so..." He shakes his head. "Actually, I don't even live here, really. I'm thinking about selling it."

Kakashi lets him babble, palming bites of ration bar when sensei isn't looking.

"I don't think it's helping Kakashi to live here," sensei says, interrupting whatever Jiraiya was saying.

"I _just_ said I was thinking about selling it."

"So we're going to go look at apartments," sensei says, pointing a partially burned wooden spoon at Kakashi, looking like he's bracing for a fight.

Kakashi just shrugs. It's pretty much the same story as the last time he was orphaned, except with Jiraiya in the background. Having his own place isn't so bad. There's never any quiet when sensei is around, and the food is better.

"Well okay then," sensei says, looking a bit bewildered.

Kakashi goes to get dressed, and his body doesn't know what routine to follow. He puts his hitai-ate over a non-existent Sharingan again, and he tries to shoulder a tanto that blew up, and he ends up crying as quietly as he can into his pillow, hoping sensei doesn't come looking for him.

But no one comes, and he gets his face washed and his clothes on right and he meets sensei just as he's finishing cleaning up the disaster in the kitchen.

Sensei starts talking about how he found the perfect place, highlighting all the features he liked, and Kakashi tunes out the words, just listening to the comforting lilt of sensei's voice.

The neighborhood they end up in doesn't look much like what Kakashi remembers, but it's been a long time since he lived here. He keeps thinking that right up until the landlady lets them inside a pleasant, spacious two-bedroom apartment, with a well-appointed kitchen and a seating area for guests.

This is definitely not the one-room dive that Kakashi had last time. It's also totally inappropriate for one kid on a genin's salary.

"What's this?" he demands, interrupting the landlady extolling its features.

"What do you mean?" sensei asks, managing to look innocently confused. How does he do that?

"I can't afford this," Kakashi says. "And I don't need this much space."

Sensei frowns at him. "What are you talking about? I'll pay for it, of course."

Kakashi frowns right back. "You're going to pay two rents?"

"No…"

Then Kakashi gets it. "Oh, no. Absolutely not. We're not getting an apartment together."

"Why not?"

The landlady quietly excuses herself, which neither of them acknowledge.

"Because we can't."

"That's not a reason."

"But… but where will Kushina sleep?"

Sensei turns bright red. "Who told you…?"

Oops. "Jiraiya," Kakashi lies.

"We're not living together, Kakashi, whatever Jiraiya told you, and please don't tell me what that was, I don't want to know. And even if she wanted to visit, she could, um, stay with me."

"But I can't live with you!"

"Yes, you can."

"Well, I won't."

"You will."

"Won't."

"Will—what the hell am I doing? I'm buying this apartment, and you're living in this apartment, and that's the end of it."

Kakashi crosses his arms over his chest and glares. Sensei can't _make_ him live here.

* * *

Both of them are still annoyed with the other and more or less storm into the house for dinner.

"Now what?" Jiraiya says, looking like he sorely regrets sticking around.

"I want to live here," Kakashi says.

"Absolutely not," sensei says. "And that's not even true, you hate it here."

"It's not that tacky," Kakashi says.

"Hey," Jiraiya says.

"That's not what I meant and you know it. Staying here is not an option."

"Then I want my own place."

"You are five years old, I'm not letting you get an apartment on your own."

"I'm six, and I know how to take care of myself!"

"Okay," Jiraiya says. "This conversation is over. Minato, take a walk."

"What?"

"You heard me. Get out. Eat something that isn't poisonous. Take a few deep breaths. The kid will still be here when you get back."

Sensei glares, but Jiraiya isn't impressed. "He'd better be!" he mutters as he leaves, slamming the door.

"Okay, I know what his problem is, now what's yours?" Jiraiya asks, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"What do you care?"

"I really, really don't. I can't stand kids and I have no interest in being a parent or a sensei."

"You are a sensei," Kakashi points out.

"Yes, thank you, I'm not senile yet. Maybe someday I'll tell you how our esteemed Hokage blackmailed me into the job, but Minato is so mature, _most of the time_ " he glares at the door "that it could have been a lot worse. That boy was born forty years old."

Kakashi's stomach growls, and he decides he might as well make dinner while he waits for Jiraiya to get to the point.

"I can do that," Jiraiya says, once Kakashi starts fiddling with the stove.

"I'm not a baby!"

"Okay, okay, fine. You can't be worse than Minato."

Kakashi can't contain a tiny sound of amusement, because sensei really is a truly terrible cook.

"That doesn't mean you're getting out of talking to me."

"It's not really any of your business."

"Well, since it concerns my student, it unfortunately is."

"What, did you get lectures like this from the Nidaime?"

"Hey, I'm not _that_ old—ugh, that's right, my student has a student. I _am_ the Nidaime."

"Don't get too carried away," Kakashi says, reluctantly amused by Jiraiya's look of total dismay.

"Cute. Now, talk."

Kakashi focuses on the vegetables he's cutting. "What's there to say?"

"Any idiot can see you're lying through your teeth about wanting to stay here. So what's the truth? You didn't like the apartment Minato showed you?"

"It was fine," Kakashi says, decimating an innocent pepper.

"Uh huh. What was wrong with it?"

"Nothing was wrong with it." A dozen mushrooms meet a similar end.

"Okay."

"Sensei wants to live there _with_ me," Kakashi says, stabbing the cutting board now that he's run out of vegetables. "You don't think that's weird?"

"Well you don't have any friends, so it's not like the other kids are going to make fun of you."

Kakashi glares at him.

"So what are you worried about?"

"That apartment," Kakashi says, dumping the vegetable puree into a saucepan, "is a _family_ apartment. Sensei isn't my family. It's weird."

Jiraiya opens his mouth, but Kakashi talks right over him.

"And he has a girlfriend, he's going to have a _real_ family someday, I don't want to… to get in the way, hanging around and… getting in the way." Everything's burning, but it doesn't matter, it would have tasted awful anyway.

Jiraiya stands up and turns the burner off. "Kakashi. Minato isn't going to just… wake up one day and forget about you."

"He will," Kakashi says. He was pretty fucked up after Obito and Rin died (understatement), but he remembers how excited sensei was when he found out he was going to be a father. "So it's better he not get too attached now. I don't want him to feel bad. Not that he should! It's a natural thing."

"Kid, that ship has sailed. You know he has an official reprimand on his record now? If Danzou hadn't died right when he did, he probably would have been demoted."

"What?"

"He just walked away from his post! In the middle of a battle! And yeah, it turned out to be a good thing, but there's no way he could have known about Danzou's conspiracy, he just heard you'd put yourself in a coma and came running."

Kakashi hadn't thought of it quite that way. "Well, that was irrational."

Jiraiya scrubs a hand over his face. "Yeah, tell me about it. The point is, he cares. About you. It's too late for takebacks."

Kakashi can feel himself starting to panic, sits down in the middle of the floor where he won't knock anything over by accident and rides it out, breathing and counting and counting and breathing until he feels calmer.

Jiraiya hands him a damp towel. "I'm disturbed by how good you are at handling that."

Kakashi shrugs, wiping his face. He's had years of practice, but he can't exactly tell Jiraiya that. "But what if something happens to me?"

Jiraiya's face goes very neutral. "What do you mean?"

"Do you think he'd be upset?"

"Yes, I'm sure he'd be… upset. Why?"

"I'm a ninja, it's a dangerous job." Kakashi frowns at the towel. "I don't want anyone to care about me. What if I died? There's nothing worse than being the one left behind."

Jiraiya gives him an extremely awkward pat on the back. "I'm afraid you can't control other people's feelings like that. You'll just have to do your best to always come back."

Kakashi's not sure he's ever been in this position. He's the protector, not the protectee. And he doesn't like it.

The door opens, and his head comes up as he tenses.

"Go on, get out of here, you get a reprieve for tonight," Jiraiya says.

Kakashi is up and sprinting out of the room before he's even finished the sentence, but he pauses just on the other side of the door, where he can listen without being seen.

"Did he say anything to you?" sensei asks anxiously.

Kakashi's chest feels tight.

"You have to stop smothering him, you're freaking him out," Jiraiya says.

Kakashi creeps away.

* * *

Jiraiya isn't there when he comes down to breakfast the next morning, but sensei is.

Kakashi hovers in the doorway.

"Come in and have some breakfast," sensei says, sounding very tired. "I won't make you leave if you don't want to."

Kakashi edges into the room, takes a seat at the opposite end of the table. "Where's Jiraiya-sensei?"

"Out. He didn't tell me where he was going."

"Oh."

Kakashi looks at the table, and the silence stretches.

It's finally broken when the door slams open, to their mutual relief.

"I swear, if this is just some perverted scheme to lure me back to your place, you're going to learn a whole new definition of pain, old man."

"Kushina?" sensei asks, sitting up and running a hand through his hair, making it stick up even more.

"Charming as ever," Jiraiya grumbles, leading their guest into the kitchen. "See? One missing victim—excuse me, boyfriend—as promised."

Kushina smacks him absently, and goes to give sensei a hug. "I wondered where you were hiding."

"Oh, well, I—"

"Shut up. Your sensei already told me everything. You know you can always ask me for help, right? I'm pretty great, you know."

Sensei gives Jiraiya wide eyes over Kushina's shoulder.

"And you must be Kakashi," she says.

He can't help cringing a little in his seat as she charges around the table at him.

"Aren't you adorable? I'm Kushina. Minato's told me all about you, of course, but he seems to think I'm going to scare you-" she glares at sensei over her shoulder "-which I'm _not_ , right?"

"Um, no?" Kakashi says.

"Great, let's go then!"

She hauls him up out of his seat and out the door, and he decides not to question where they're going.

Sensei catches up to them after only a few steps, and he's soon smiling and making cow eyes at Kushina.

Kakashi wants to fall back and give them some space, but Kushina has a hand clamped around his wrist and it's not budging.

She consults a list she's carrying, and drags the two of them to an apartment complex.

"What do you think?" she asks.

"Er," sensei says.

Kakashi is just confused. Whose side is Jiraiya on here? On the one hand, Kushina is doing an excellent job distracting sensei, who seems to have forgotten Kakashi is even there, but on the other hand, this is still obviously a family apartment.

"I don't like the color," Kushina says. "Can we paint it?"

The landlord jumps at the abrupt address. "Uh, no."

"Well, on to the next one then," Kushina says, pulling Kakashi back out the door.

"What exactly are we doing?" sensei asks.

"Your sensei showed up at my door and told me you wanted to look at apartments, so we're looking at apartments," Kushina says.

"Well, but…" Sensei's whole face turns a brilliant, brick red. "Do-do you mean, like, together?"

Kushina whirls around, forcing Kakashi into an awkward hop-step to keep on his feet. "Of course! Though it was pretty cheap of you to send your sensei to ask me, you know!" She pauses. Ominously. "Unless you don't _want_ to live with me."

"Of course I do! I mean, if you want to. I just thought it was… kind of soon… I wasn't sure if I should ask you yet."

"Namikaze, you know that when I make up my mind, I never go back on it. I said you were the one, and I meant it. Didn't you?"

"Yes! I-I would love to get an apartment with you, Kushina."

Kakashi can't feel his hand anymore. "Can I go?"

"No. What do you think about this one?"

The only difference from the last two is a sort of office-area off to one side. "I'm not living here," Kakashi says.

"It's not so bad," Kushina says. "Could use more orange."

Kakashi tries to escape again, but he thinks her hand might be fused to his wrist. "There's only two bedrooms," he finally says.

"Um, Minato and I can share," she says. She turns to sensei and whispers—loudly— "What have you been teaching him? Doesn't he live with your perverted sensei?"

"But your kid!" Kakashi insists, glaring at sensei. He's sure Jiraiya tattled on him after he left.

"Did you tell him I'm pregnant?" Kushina demands.

The landlord looks like he wants to be anywhere besides this room.

"No, he came up with that on his own!"

"Well," Kushina says, "how about that other room then?"

"What?"

"What?"

Growling, Kushina seizes sensei's wrist with her other hand and drags them both into the study. "See? We can put a bed in here, no one wants to do boring paperwork, anyway. Then we have a room, you have a room, the non-existent baby has a room, how's that, huh?"

Kakashi glares at the rubbish bin. He doesn't have a good argument against that, at least nothing that would work against Kushina. He didn't know her that well, because he was disappearing into ANBU when sensei introduced them the first time around, but he well remembers that she's a force of nature. Just like her son.

"…fine," he grumbles.

Sensei gets this uncomfortably blissful expression on his face, leans over to kiss Kushina—right over Kakashi's head!—and Kakashi already regrets this.

* * *

"Guess what, sensei!?"

Kakashi rolls his eyes as sensei barges into Jiraiya's house and then his personal space, catches an expression of pure relief on Jiraiya's face before sensei tackles Jiraiya right off his chair.

"Yes, yes, didn't I tell you that I was an expert on women?" Jiraiya grumble. "Calm down."

Sensei does not calm down. "We should celebrate!"

"As long as you're not cooking," Kushina teases.

Kakashi huffs and goes to look through the cupboards. They probably don't even have any food.

"We can go out," sensei decides. "My treat."

"Deal," Jiraiya and Kushina say at the same time.

Sensei gives them both a wary look.

Well, Kakashi thinks, at least he has a jounin's salary.


	5. Chapter 5

Warnings: Nightmares, the beginning of the long road of Kakashi actually confronting his issues.

* * *

They move into the new apartment at the end of the week, and Kakashi refuses to admit to anyone, especially himself, that it's a relief not to have to live in a place he used to share with his father.

He arranges his belongings on one side of the room, and his futon fits neatly under the desk he insists that they keep. Kushina may love paperwork about as much as her son will, but sensei didn't design the Hiraishin overnight. This is going to be an office, even if right now it is also a sleeping space for a very temporary houseguest.

He also insists that they can't use Naruto's room for storage. He scrounges some ramen flyers that he thinks Naruto would appreciate to decorate the walls, and he liberates one of Jiraiya's weapons racks for when Naruto is ready to start his ninja training.

"I think I'm going to like this kid," is Kushina's only comment.

Sensei is visibly biting his lip, but he lets Kakashi do what he wants with the room.

Kakashi is surprised that sensei lasts a whole week before he pins him down for a "private talk", meaning, Kushina isn't due back for hours.

"I'm just going to say something, and then you can go if you want," sensei says.

Kakashi is skeptical.

"Look. I know you think you're very mature—and you are!—but you're still five. Six. That carries with it a certain responsibility on my part to make sure you are well cared for and have room to grow into an adult. And… it's not like this is a surprise to me. I knew how old you were when I took you on as a student, and I expected, _wanted_ , to do this kind of thing for you, to, to make your lunch, and read adventure stories, and all that… kid stuff."

"I can already cook for myself," Kakashi says. "Better than you can."

"Okay, that's a fair point." He puts on a Naruto resolve face. "I'll learn to cook, then."

Kakashi knows he's going to regret putting that idea in his head. "And I don't have time for… for stories and… kid stuff."

"Why not? You can't train all the time, Kakashi. It's not healthy."

"I know that," Kakashi says. "Muscles need a period of rest in order to grow. But… I don't know how to do any of that other stuff."

Sensei gives him a soft look.

Kakashi looks away.

"You already know how to train your body to fight; let me teach you how to play."

"That's definitely not what you thought you'd be teaching me," Kakashi says.

"Well, perhaps not, but this is fun, too."

"I don't know if I can," Kakashi admits.

Sensei takes a deep breath. He looks like he's counting to ten in his head. "It's possible. You've been through a lot, and you've had to grow up very fast. But I think you can, and I'd like you to try. Let me set some age-appropriate boundaries and activities, and give being six a try."

"I'm—I'm really fu-messed up, sensei. I don't want you to be upset if you can't help me."

This time sensei counts to ten out loud. "Come here, Kakashi."

Warily, Kakashi let's himself be pulled against sensei's side, one strong arm holding him close.

"I know that you're having a hard time right now, and I know things will be difficult. I believe that you can make it through this and be a happy kid again—or for the first time. But you're right, I can't absolutely exclude the possibility that you might not. And if that's the case, I'll deal with it. You are not responsible for my emotional well-being, or my career or my legacy or all the other things you're worrying about."

He gives Kakashi a squeeze when he tries to interrupt.

"Yes, I know that hasn't been your experience so far. I'm sure you're very confused about the boundaries between a parent's—or a sensei's—role and a child's role in a relationship. I know it will be hard for you, but I want you to try and accept that I can handle this. I am an adult in good mental and emotional health, with a strong support network I can depend on. You don't need to take care of me."

Kakashi has no idea what to say to such an extraordinary speech.

"Okay, I promised to let you go if you heard me out. Please, just… think about it."

He lifts his arm and Kakashi runs out, closing the door to his r—to the office firmly. He shoves his futon out of the way and curls up under the desk, breathing hard.

He stays there until Kushina knocks on the door, telling him dinner is ready, which it turns out is Kushina-speak for she brought takeout.

True to his word, sensei doesn't say anything about their conversation at dinner, and neither does Kushina, though she's looking back and forth between them with narrowed eyes in a way that does not bode well for sensei once Kakashi leaves the room.

Kakashi eats as quickly as he can before retreating again, laying out his futon so he can stretch out.

And think.

He can't stop turning sensei's extraordinary words over and over in his mind.

The first thing he feels is guilt, because sensei is so sincere and Kakashi is such a liar. He isn't six, he's Jiraiya's age (well, almost) and he feels like he's cheating sensei of this experience he wants, raising an actual kid.

He has to stop and feel the little thrill that goes through him at the idea. Sensei wants to _raise_ him.

But the fact is, whether it makes him a bad person or no, Kakashi can live with that guilt, live with the lie. He hasn't really given much thought to what he's going to do long-term, but he's doesn't have to consider it to know that he's never going to tell anyone about the possible futures. Even if he can find someone who doesn't dismiss him as totally insane, there's no reason to burden them with the knowledge of that possible future.

And now that Danzou is gone, his evil ripped out of Konoha by the roots, Kakashi… has time. If he wanted to, he could just… grow up.

He may not be really six, but he can still admit that he's emotionally and socially stunted. He can barely interact with people and he completely fell apart the last few times he tried to fight. He's drowning in the mess of his life, and he has no idea how to get himself out.

But here, in this time, in this body, sensei doesn't expect him to. He can turn back the clock, in a very unique way, and let himself be six, whatever that entails, and try his hand at this whole childhood thing. He doesn't have any idea how to do that, but he can trust that sensei does.

Maybe.

He doesn't sleep that night.

* * *

No one says anything to him the next few days, besides Kushina's usual attempts to draw him into a conversation about the food, the paint, her last mission, or whatever she feels like talking about at the moment. Sensei is kind of sulky the first day, but he's soon chattering away at her and making goofy faces like he always does.

So it looks like, even if Kakashi does or says something to upset him, Kushina can help him feel better.

He also suffers through sensei buying about twenty different cookbooks and making a serious bid at burning the apartment down. The fire alarm goes off three times in their first week alone.

Kakashi doesn't think they're going to be very popular with their neighbors.

Kushina thinks it's hilarious.

This probably isn't what she was imagining when Jiraiya asked her to move in with sensei. They're still really young, probably didn't think they were going to start their lives together with a seriously dysfunctional kid.

Kakashi broods over this for the rest of the day and all that night, but he just can't reason out how they're feeling.

So he brings it up at breakfast.

"I think I'm intruding on your relationship," he says.

Sensei puts down his chopsticks.

"Why's that?" Kushina asks with her mouth full.

"Well, because I'm here. And you're here," Kakashi says lamely.

"Both excellent points," Kushina says.

Kakashi glares at her. "Isn't there supposed to be a stage where it's just the two of you? Before there's extra people hanging around? To do… relationship things?" He's not actually sure what that might be, nor does he particularly want to know.

"Some people do it that way," Kushina says. "But I never do things just because that's how other people do them. It's not really my style."

"But—"

"Anyway, I knew this was coming. From the moment Minato set eyes on you, he never shut up about you. Kakashi did this, Kakashi said that, on and on. Jiraiya says it was justice, after all he had to hear about me."

Sensei sinks in his chair, blushing.

"I think it's a good thing, actually. With two of us to obsess over, he doesn't hover quite so much."

"Kushina…"

"And we haven't really been dating that long, so between our jobs and looking after you, it gives us a little space from each other. I think it's really helped our relationship, actually."

Kakashi narrows his eyes, trying to determine if she's lying or exaggerating.

"What she said," sensei says. "Though I don't think I hover _that_ much."

Kushina rolls her eyes.

"You do," Kakashi says.

"I'm beset on all sides," sensei complains, but he doesn't sound that mad about it.

It's something to think about, anyway, and Kakashi goes back to eating in silence.

* * *

Nightmares wake Kakashi, and he stuffs his fist in his mouth and holds himself perfectly still, like he learned to do for missions, like he's done every night since he found himself back in this time, and so many nights before that.

As part of his newfound resolve to "help" Kakashi, sensei has started to notice when he nods off over breakfast or starts dragging his feet hours before bed. It's no great feat to realize that Kakashi doesn't sleep well, and anyway he must have heard Kakashi having nightmares at some point during his recent stint at the hospital.

But Kakashi can't tell sensei that he's from the future, that he panics because he's forgotten his ANBU training not to, that he can't use ninjutsu because of a stolen Sharingan he doesn't even have, that—

He doesn't know what he was thinking. There's nothing sensei can do to help him, and he shouldn't have given him false hope.

Long experience tells him he won't be falling asleep again anytime soon, and he tries to smooth out his tangled blankets as quietly as possible.

The light in the main room comes on.

Kakashi freezes.

There's a light knock on his door. "Kakashi, is that you moving around in there? Aren't you asleep yet?"

It's sensei. Of course it's sensei.

Kakashi doesn't move, doesn't even breathe.

Eventually he hears sensei moving away, and he flops onto his futon, sore from holding such an awkward position for so long. Sensei has to have heard that, even if he somehow didn't realize Kakashi was awake before, but he doesn't open the door.

But the light stays on.

Kakashi is tired, sticky with sweat, and wide awake. He doesn't really want to sit here alone in the dark.

He considers the narrow line of light under his door.

Then he kicks off the twisted blanket and steps out into the main room.

Sensei is sitting on the couch reading a book, even though it's the middle of the night. "There you are."

Kakashi feels foolish, but he's already out here, so… "I had a bad dream."

Sensei puts down his book. "Come here."

Feeling like there are lead weights in his feet, Kakashi does.

"Your pajamas are sticking to you; would you like a bath?"

Kakashi shrugs.

"Okay, let's go have a bath and put on some clean pajamas."

It's kind of a waste, since he'll just ruin those, too, but the pajamas are uncomfortable so he obediently follows sensei as he gets clothes for Kakashi, clothes for himself, and then heads down to the bath.

The warm water is pleasant, and not being sticky is more than pleasant, so Kakashi decides this wasn't a complete waste of time.

"I didn't know you were still having nightmares," sensei says.

Kakashi shrugs. He would hardly be a functional field ninja if he woke up screaming all the time.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

He doesn't. But sensei is looking so hopeful and sincere, and Kakashi is lying to him about basically everything, and it doesn't cost him that much to admit to a nightmare he's already been caught having. "I dreamed that you didn't come and find me," he says, slowly. "And one day I came home and my father had killed himself."

Sensei inhales sharply, but all he says is, "That sounds very upsetting."

Kakashi thinks about that day, exhausted from the exam, hoping that news of his success would finally get his father to _look_ at him again. The dark house. The blood seeping across the floor. The body. The note.

"Yeah," he says. "Upsetting."

Sensei doesn't make him talk more, and after he's soaked long enough that his muscles are finally relaxed again, they get out and Kakashi lets sensei dress him, even though he's perfectly capable of dressing himself, and towel off his increasingly wild hair. Sensei insists on straightening his futon, smoothing out the twisted blankets, and pats his head. "Goodnight, Kakashi."

"Goodnight, sensei."

In the end, Kakashi gets a solid three hours of sleep before the next nightmare wakes him, so he has to concede that sensei might have some helpful ideas.

The next day sensei is acting totally strange, though not in the way Kakashi was half-expecting, half-dreading. He was sure sensei would want to keep talking, about that specific nightmare or nightmares in general, but he doesn't reference the incident at all.

Instead, he's practically bouncing around the apartment, bursting with energy, until Kushina orders him out until he can control himself.

"Did he eat too much sugar or something?" Kakashi asks, baffled.

"Or something," Kushina says darkly. "Let's go get something to eat. He was going on about trying out a recipe all morning, so we should eat as much as possible now."

Sensei is still acting weird at dinner—which is surprisingly not terrible—but it's not totally out of character for him to be happy for no discernible reason. Kakashi retreats to the office, curling up with a scroll on advanced earth jutsu sensei doesn't know he borrowed.

He has three nightmares that night, but he doesn't leave the room. How often do normal people have nightmares? Is every other night too often to admit to?

Sensei practically jumps on him the second he appears for breakfast. "We should do something fun today!"

Kushina forces him into a chair and sits on him. "We talked about this, Minato. Don't pressure him."

"Sorry," sensei says, repentant. "Only if you want, Kakashi."

Kakashi breathes a sigh of relief. All that business yesterday was just sensei being sensei. "After lunch?"

"Sounds perfect," sensei says, beaming.

Kushina huffs at him and excuses herself. She has a lot more missions than sensei, who Kakashi suspects is on some sort of leave, because he's pretty much always around.

They rush through breakfast, then it's time for sensei's idea of training. A criminally brief warm-up, the basic Academy kata, and a fight over what ninjutsu is too advanced for him to be messing with.

Kakashi isn't sure what he'll do if he ever actually wins this fight, because all his weeks of chakra control exercises have barely made a difference in his reserves. He's starting to think it might be a residual effect of the time travel, or some bizarre psychological effect of the Sharingan.

He also hasn't acquired a replacement tanto yet, and he hasn't decided if he wants to.

Kakashi drags training out for as long as possibly, holding stances much longer than necessary so he can at least work on building up his strength, until sensei declares it's time for lunch.

Then it's usually time for round two of how much is too much for Kakashi to be practicing, or a boring D-rank mission, but today they're "doing something fun".

Sensei has decided their destination is going to be a surprise, and watching him try to make Kakashi walk faster, bursting with the effort of not talking, is entertaining enough that it hardly even matters where they're ultimately going.

It turns out to be a bookstore.

Kakashi automatically turns to the small section on Konoha history—this is an entirely civilian establishment, so there's nothing on jutsu—but sensei steers him towards the brightly colored section littered with stuffed toys and squishy round chairs.

Kakashi eyes the arrangement dubiously.

"We are going to find something _fun_ to read," sensei declares, with the same tone he delivers mission orders, and Kakashi decides to give in gracefully.

He's not reading the picture books with the over-sized print, though; he's six, not _two_.

He finds a ninja adventure story fairly quickly, but that is rejected.

"It can't have any fighting."

No _fighting_? What's the point?

Well, at least it might make an interesting challenge.

Kakashi combs the shelves, finding lots of ninja stories of course, but also samurai, pirates, even some about summon animals. And all of them about fighting.

He finally emerges, triumphant, without having to resort to the baby books.

"Mysteries?" sensei asks dubiously.

"Not murder mysteries," Kakashi explains patiently. "It's just missing school supplies, stuff like that. But the main character has an eidetic memory, so that's kind of cool."

Sensei gives him a sharp look.

"What? It's little kid stuff, just like you wanted."

Sensei takes the book to go pay for it, along with a suspiciously primary-colored game box.

"Is that like Go?" Kakashi asks. He doesn't really play games himself, but he heard Asuma gripe about it often enough.

"Sort of," sensei says vaguely.

Uh huh.

They buy a snack from one of the vendors and go to the park.

"Wouldn't it be quieter to read at the apartment?" Kakashi asks, eyeing the screaming children critically.

"Probably, but fresh air is good for you."

Sensei finds a tree to lean against, then pulls Kakashi into his lap, positioning the book so they can both see it easily. "Is this okay?"

It's kind of weird, but not bad, Kakashi decides. "This is okay."

The book turns out to really be a mystery, and you have to try and figure out the answer, which is kind of neat. Though since each story is only a few pages, it's not that difficult.

"Well, it's a start," sensei says, after Kakashi explains all this, and the solution to the first two mysteries.

"What's the next one?" Kakashi asks.

"Do you want to read for a little while?" sensei asks, coughing.

Kakashi looks at the book. It's all kanji. "Let's do something else," Kakashi says.

Sensei looks a little surprised, but he doesn't say anything, just folds the page over and retrieves the colored monstrosity. There's a board inside, which unfolds to reveal a wandering path of colored squares, surrounded by round, smiling figures.

"This is a baby game, isn't it," Kakashi says.

"Just try it," sensei says, which is totally a yes.

There are little colored game pieces, and the objective is obvious: get your piece from the start to finish.

"Just flip over a card and go to the next square with that color," sensei says.

"This is dumb, it's just chance," Kakashi says.

"Well it was hard to find one that wasn't a strategy game."

Kakashi humors him for about three cards, then starts devising ways to defeat the various characters, speculating on their strengths and weaknesses.

Sensei gives in after two more turns, and the game gets much more interesting as they compete to overthrow Candy Land.

* * *

Kakashi manages to "lose" the game on the way home, but he and sensei read together at least once a day, and it's kind of nice, and helps break up the monotony since Kakashi isn't allowed to go anywhere or do anything.

Sensei also seems to be genuinely and inexplicably pleased to be woken in the middle of the night. Kakashi only admits to having nightmares every three days or so (he doesn't stick to an exact pattern of course, amateur mistake), but it's been two weeks and he's resigned to having someone waiting for him in the main room.

Then comes the night when it's Kushina instead of sensei.

"Minato had to go out," she says. "Apparently something only he can handle, so my guess is that Jiraiya got arrested again."

Kakashi isn't sure what to do.

"He explained your routine to me, don't worry," Kushina says. "Though I'll give you a choice: do you want to take a bath by yourself, or do you want me to come with you?"

Kakashi flushes. "I can bathe myself!"

"Okay, I'll just fix you some hot chocolate then." She frowns when he doesn't move. "Run along."

He slinks off, more because he suspects that she'll drag him to the bath and throw him in than anything else, and finds clean pajamas have replaced his old ones when he emerges.

Kushina has a fluffy blanket that she loves and Kakashi very privately thinks is the ugliest thing he's ever seen, and she wraps it around both of them and puts a mug of hot chocolate in his hands.

"I don't really like sweets," he says.

"Just try it."

He takes a sip, and it's not bad, actually a little bitter. He takes another, bigger sip.

She laughs quietly.

This is kind of nice, Kakashi decides. It's warm and comfortable, and he's always cold after a nightmare.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Kakashi shakes his head.

She doesn't say anything else, and eventually it goes back to being comfortable, so comfortable he falls asleep again.

He wakes up screaming and flailing, and panics when he realizes he can't move.

"It's okay, you're okay!"

He hears a ripping noise, and suddenly his arms are free, but then he loses his balance and falls off the couch.

He hits his face on the table and that's definitely going to leave a bruise, but it also knocks some sense into him. He's in sensei and Kushina's apartment, there's no threat, it's all in his head.

"You back with me?" Kushina asks.

He nods, embarrassed by his clumsiness, and lets her help him back onto the couch.

"That was a bad one," she says, once he's settled.

He's instantly wary.

"I don't think I've ever heard you make noise before."

That's a fair point. He's a little surprised himself.

"Can you tell me about it?"

He's set himself on a schedule, where he admits to nightmares twice a week and "talks about it" once a week, and this isn't a talking about it day, but he supposes he owes her for giving her such a scare. He opens his mouth.

And freezes.

He'd had a nightmare about sensei and Kushina dying, ripped apart and burned almost beyond recognition by the Kyuubi. It was so vivid he could smell the demonic chakra, and now he realizes that he _can_ smell that chakra.

Very faintly, but Kakashi faced the Kyuubi twice in battle and he trained a Jinchuuriki, and he's always had an acute sense of smell. He's certain.

It's Kushina. Because she's the Jinchuuriki.

He snaps his mouth shut. He obviously can't tell her he mistook her for the Kyuubi, or that he dreamed she killed sensei.

He looks at the wall, the floor, anywhere but at her face. And sees her hideous blanket.

He's ripped it.

"I ruined your blanket," he says, feeling awful even though he hates it.

"Eh. I think it adds character."

Kakashi gives the ripped blanket a dubious look.

"You can help me fix it, if you want."

Yes. Kakashi owes her for ruining her possessions, his earlier dramatics, and for thinking Kushina was dangerous, even in his subconscious. "Okay."

Kakashi is a skilled ninja, has excellent manual dexterity, and somehow that all flies out the window when he has a needle in his baby hands. He and Kushina were working on the blanket together, but she's too busy laughing at him now to help.

"If this were a senbon, I could incapacitate you for hours," Kakashi says, then stabs himself in the finger.

She just laughs, and he's too annoyed to feel guilty anymore.

* * *

He considers feeling guilty again the next morning, but she is so aggressively Kushina that he just doesn't get around to it. Sensei still isn't back yet, so she takes him out for breakfast and they go down to one of the outdoor training areas.

"Don't you have a mission?" he asks.

"No. When Minato was called out I notified the Mission Office that I wasn't available today."

Kakashi frowns. "I can be by myself for one day."

"I'm sure you can," she says. "But neither Minato nor I want you to be. People take a day off here and there all the time, it's totally normal."

As usual, Kakashi can't tell if she's lying, and his relationship with missions as a jounin was hardly typical, so he can't rely on his own experience.

If she's already given notice, it's probably too late to change anything, Kakashi decides.

Training is a little better today. She thinks the Academy kata is boring and starts to teach him a new one, one she learned in Whirlpool and he's never seen before. They finish with chakra meditation, and he spends most of it formulating his argument for extra training this afternoon, which he's pretty much given up on with sensei, but she derails him before he even gets to make it.

"Okay, we're doing something fun!" she declares. "Minato's orders."

Kakashi had been sort of hoping he'd forgotten about that. "What are we doing?"

"Well, what's your favorite food?"

"I don't have a favorite food."

"Good."

"Good?"

And that's how Kakashi finds himself on a tour of the restaurants in Konoha.

"The only rule is that you have to order something you've never tried before," Kushina says.

"But isn't my favorite food more likely to be among the foods I already know I like?"

"No."

Kakashi gives up and orders something at random.

Kushina always orders the strangest thing on the menu, even though it always ends up being gross, and then makes him try some like she doesn't think he believes her assessment.

They definitely don't find a favorite food, and by the time dinner rolls around they're both starving despite spending the whole afternoon in various restaurants, but Kakashi is willing to concede, privately, that it was amusing watching her face contort as she tasted her choices.

Sensei is waiting when they return, with takeout, so Kakashi decides not to be too annoyed by the wasted afternoon.


	6. Chapter 6

Warnings: References to nightmares, panic attacks, past trauma

* * *

Another week passes, Kakashi admits to his allotted two nightmares and tells sensei he dreamed that Danzou wanted to kill him, which he thinks is plausible enough, then sensei decides they need to have another talk.

Kakashi knows it's going to be a bad one, because Kushina is there, too.

"What's wrong now?" Kakashi asks, perched on the edge of the couch.

"I'm a little concerned that this in-between status isn't good for you," sensei says.

Kakashi was bracing himself to be confronted about his nightmares, but now he's just confused. "Huh?"

"I told the Sandaime that I don't think it's good for genin to be in a one-on-one situation, that teams are important for healthy social development, but I let him convince me that I didn't understand the needs of very gifted students. Ha!"

"You don't want to be my sensei anymore?" Kakashi asks, which he has to admit is a possibility he had not previously considered. Very uncharacteristic of him, since life always conspires to fuck him over in the worst possible ways, and he should know by now to brace himself for the worst.

"What? No, that is _absolutely not_ what I meant," sensei says, so vehemently that Kakashi starts breathing again. "I just think we should take some steps to… normalize your situation."

"Like what?" Nothing about Kakashi's life or career has ever been normal, and he highly doubts trying to impose some sort of order at this late hour will do any good. Not that sensei has any way to know how late it really is.

Kushina moves to sit next to Kakashi and pulls him against her side, which he decides to allow.

"I had some ideas, but I'm also open to suggestion," sensei says carefully.

"Just get on with it," Kakashi says.

"Well, how would you feel about being part of a proper three-man squad? With me as sensei, of course."

Kakashi clutches Kushina's arm like a lifeline, as he remembers Obito shouting at him for abandoning Rin, Obito crushed, Rin dying at his hand. "No."

"Okay." Sensei looks at Kushina, waiting for her to nod, and Kakashi braces himself. "Do you… do you want to take the chuunin exam?"

Kakashi blacks out.

He comes to with both sensei and Kushina fluttering over him, and it can't have been more than a few seconds because sensei is only threatening to rush him to the hospital, and hasn't actually done it yet.

It's been a very long time since he lost consciousness solely due to emotional upset, but it's not so bad, especially since he didn't fall off anything and he's safely in Konoha. And unlike a regular panic attack, he's not dizzy or jittery or short of breath; it's like a full-body reset, and he feels perfectly fine.

"Are you alright, Kakashi?" Kushina asks.

"Fine."

Sensei looks like he's going to drag him to the hospital anyway.

"Really, it happens sometimes. I'm fine. Do I ever pretend to be fine when I'm having a panic attack?"

"No…" sensei says, "which is kind of unusual, actually. How long have you been dealing with those?"

Kakashi shrugs. He can't exactly tell the truth, can he?

Kushina and sensei exchange another look, but apparently decide to let it go. Kakashi's expertise in handling panic attacks is something they decided not to question him about, presumably in hopes that he'll confess on his own. That's not going to happen, but he'll take their help anyway as long as it's on offer.

"So, I'll take that as a no, then," sensei says, with a forced smile. He runs a hand through his hair. "The thing is, you're automatically granted leave for special circumstances, and the death of a family member is one of them."

Kakashi actually hadn't known that.

"But, well, it's been six weeks, and your time is almost up. Uh, tomorrow, actually. I should have mentioned this earlier."

"Okay then. Will we be resuming missions?"

"We could do that."

There's a long pause, where sensei stares at his hands in apparent fascination.

"…or?" Kakashi prompts.

"Or I could request medical leave for you," sensei says, and now he's staring at Kakashi instead.

Kakashi blinks. "Why? I'm not injured."

Sensei takes a few deep breaths.

"Medical leave isn't just for physical injury," Kushina says. "We're both concerned about your state of mind."

"Kushina."

"You're just going to freak him out talking around the issue," she says. She gives Kakashi a sort of one-armed hug.

Kakashi frowns. "Lots of ninja have nightmares." Had he admitted to too many?

"Yes, they do. It's very common, and totally normal," sensei says, firmly. "And you've had some very traumatic things happen to you, and nightmares, flashbacks, panic attacks, these are all totally natural responses."

"I know that," Kakashi says.

"Well, it's perfectly normal, but it can also be a sign that your mind is having a difficult time coping with the trauma. Which is common, and normal-"

"Sensei," Kakashi interrupts, "you don't need to keep reminding me that it's normal. I really do know that. I'm not embarrassed or anything. Just get to the point."

Inexplicably, this seems to make him even more nervous, and Kushina hugs him again. "We're worried about you," sensei says. "Both because we want you to be a healthy, happy little boy, and because it can be very dangerous for you out on missions."

Kakashi decides to let the 'little boy' thing go and considers the second point. It's a good one. All his most recent fights have been unqualified disasters, and he's endangered himself and his comrades by constantly falling to pieces. Maybe he could have saved Neji, Sasuke, that woman in Wave, Sakura…

He shakes his head. Maybe he could and maybe he couldn't; the fact is that he didn't. And if he wants to avoid making the same mistakes all over again, he needs to get his head on straight.

"That seems reasonable," he says. "How does medical leave work?"

Sensei and Kushina exchange a long look over his head.

"Well, we'll take you to the hospital for some tests. They'll ask you some questions, do a physical, that sort of thing. Since I'm bringing you in for psychological reasons, there will be an extensive evaluation. If you pass-"

Kakashi barely suppresses his scoff. Like that's going to happen.

"-it will make our case a little more complicated, but I want you to be as truthful as possible. The only right answer here is whatever will help you. If you don't, they'll grant the leave, and you'll have to pass an evaluation to be put back on active duty." Sensei bites his lip. "Depending on your results, you might be assigned to weekly therapy sessions."

Great. But he supposes he can endure it. "For how long?"

They share another meaningful look.

"We'll have to see—"

Kakashi rolls his eyes and interrupts. "Sensei. Please. You've obviously put a lot of thought into this. How long were you thinking?"

"I'm your sensei and your legal guardian, so the ultimate decision is mine, but I'm going to ask for your input every step of the way. It's your life and well-being at stake here."

Kakashi stares him down.

"Okay, fine. I was thinking maybe… a few years?"

"Years?"

Sensei cringes a little. "It's, uh, just a thought."

"You must be really worried."

"Well, we are, but… do you remember what I said about three-man squads?"

"Ah. You want to reinstate me when I'm a normal age for a genin, so I can be part of a team."

"Uh, yes."

Kakashi thinks about it. He has to remind himself not to shake, because Kushina is right there and she'll know. Sneaky.

Obito and Rin could have been great ninja, well of course they were great ninja, but if given the chance to grow up, absent whatever had so warped Obito and that damn Sanbi, they could have done amazing things for this village, fallen in love, had a dozen clumsy, cheerful kids…

He owes it to them to give them back the futures he cut short.

So he has to do this. The way he is now, he can't even think about either of them, let alone fight by their sides. And things will be different this time. They'll meet as genin, instead of chuunin, and he won't be such an irredeemable ass, and he'll treat them both like respected comrades.

"Okay, then," he says. "That sounds like a good idea."

He doesn't think he's ever seen sensei so surprised. "You-you think so?"

Kakashi frowns. "Sensei, it was your idea."

"Yes, but- I didn't really think you would go for it."

"What he means," Kushina interrupts, "is that it is a good idea, and you've made a good decision."

"Right. That's what I meant." Sensei shakes his head. "You just-you always surprise me, Kakashi. You never react the way I think you will."

Kakashi isn't sure what to make of that, since he often feels like sensei is reading his mind.

"Well, okay then. I'll go file our requests, then."

Wait, what? "Wait, what?"

Sensei looks sheepish. "Okay, so I wanted to be prepared for any contingency and I already had the forms filled out. I would have ripped them up if you didn't go for it."

So not the point. "What do you mean 'our'?"

Sensei frowns. "Well, I can't take, like, vicarious mental health leave, but I'm going to use my vacation time to stay here with you. What did you think was going to happen? That you would just sit around by yourself all day while Kushina and I were on missions?"

Kakashi wants to formulate a logical protest, but what emerges an embarrassing sort of squawk.

Because he is the most singularly incomprehensible person on the planet, sensei seems to relax. "This is more like what I was expecting."

Kakashi finds his words. "You can't just quit being a ninja! There's nothing wrong with you! The village is depending on you! I'll-I'll take the chuunin exam."

"Okay, first, you're not taking the exam, you passed out when I mentioned it, second, you seem to be under the impression that I'll let you do whatever you want when you become a chuunin, which I promise you is false, and third, the village can wait." He frowns. "Also, there's nothing 'wrong' with you, either."

Kakashi could not have been more shocked if sensei had ripped off his face and revealed he was secretly Orochimaru all along. "Bwuh?" he says.

"It's true," Kushina says. "Now that the war just kind of didn't happen, we have a whole bunch of antsy ninja with nothing to do, and so many kids were rushed through the Academy that I'd be surprised if there was a single D-rank available in the whole village. Everything's quiet."

Huh. Kakashi hadn't thought of that.

"You are my student," sensei says, after giving Kushina's words time to sink in. "My most important duty to the village right now is to see that you become the best ninja you can be, so really, you could say that I'm excelling at being a ninja, not quitting."

Kakashi isn't sure that quite makes sense, but he is sure that sensei is committed to this course of action. "Well, if you're sure…" he says doubtfully.

Sensei jumps up and runs into the study, rifling through the desk. The forms were right there and Kakashi hadn't noticed? Embarrassing.

"I'll be right back!" he says, jumping out the window instead of using the door.

Kushina is smiling after him fondly.

"Want to help me order something for when he gets back?"

Kakashi agrees, if only to keep her from ordering the whole menu. Again.

* * *

Sensei obviously doesn't want to waste time, because the very next day they go the hospital for Kakashi to be evaluated.

"You'll have a physical first," sensei says.

They go up one hallway and down another, to a part of the hospital Kakashi has never seen before.

"Where are we?" he asks.

"Pediatrics," sensei says, after a long pause. "Haven't you been here before?"

"Maybe?" Kakashi hedges. He woke up in one of the usual rooms for treating chakra exhaustion last time he was here, and he doesn't remember much of his life before he became a genin.

They go into a private room, which is wallpapered with dancing animals, and meet a smiling nurse in bright purple scrubs.

Aside from the surroundings, and the nurse's cheery commentary, everything after that is familiar. Yearly physicals are required for active ninja.

Except then she goes to get another nurse, and then a medic, and finally a civilian doctor.

"I thought this was supposed to be the easy part," Kakashi says.

"When was the last time you had a physical?" sensei asks.

Kakashi doesn't answer. He has no idea when he last had a physical, chronologically or subjectively, and anyway he's not so ignorant as to not realize that that would be a totally unacceptable response.

The whole mess of professionals eventually stop arguing over his records and test results, and sit them both down for an extremely long lecture.

Poor sensei obviously bears the brunt of a lecture that they'd really rather give the Hokage about graduating ninja at such a young age, and basically it boils down to Kakashi overstraining himself to the point that he is potentially stunting his growth, and possibly his ability to develop muscle as an adult.

They show sensei a bunch of charts and articles and things, and Kakashi has to insist on seeing everything, too. They obviously don't think much of his ability to understand, which is annoying, but at least he's peripherally included in the discussion after that.

Then they segue into a dissertation on proper nutrition. Obviously insufficient nourishment can affect growth, but apparently a lack of fat can inhibit brain development in a child.

Kakashi hadn't known any of that, so he listens carefully. It didn't seem to affect him before, but that could just be luck, and he was still fairly young when he went into ANBU and first encountered the regulated diet plan. And of course he's carried all his issues with not eating when he's stressed back with him from the future.

By the time they're finally allowed to leave, sensei is looking tense and stressed.

"Sorry," Kakashi says. "I tried to tell them it's not your fault."

Sensei seems kind of distracted. "Don't worry about it; it's important information to know."

Well, yes, but they didn't have to be so mean about it. They only thing more aggravating than the way they treated Kakashi like an idiot child was the way they seemed to be accusing sensei of something.

It isn't far to the child psychology department, which is wallpapered with dancing ducks.

Kakashi rolls his eyes.

Sensei is given a choice between a children's picture book and a women's fashion magazine and banished to the waiting room while Kakashi has his session.

The psychologist keeps talking about how Kakashi should feel comfortable, he can say anything, does he want a stuffed animal to cuddle, on and on. Kakashi wants to tell him to hurry up, but figures that would probably be counterproductive. Maybe an actual six-year-old would be nervous in this situation.

Kakashi isn't worried at all. He's been in therapy for years, he's an expert at this.

Forty-five minutes later, the psychologist puts down his clipboard.

"You know everything you tell me in this room is confidential," he begins.

"Really?"

The man gives him a fake smile. "Yes."

"I thought the Hokage sees all evaluations."

"Well, except for the Hokage."

"And the review board?"

The man frowns. "You understand a lot about this."

"Of course. I'm not stupid."

"I didn't say you were. But you're right, to be strictly accurate, there is a team of people who will review this session, but they are bound by the same rules of confidentiality as myself."

"I know that."

"This isn't meant to be a punishment for you, it's meant to help you. So it's important that you be as truthful as you can."

Kakashi shrugs.

"Your sensei won't have access to any of this information."

Now it's Kakashi's turn to frown. "I don't care if he sees the transcripts. He's taking care of me, it might even be helpful."

The psychologist puts his clipboard down. "Would you be more comfortable if he was here?"

Kakashi shrugs again. "It doesn't make a difference to me."

"This is entirely your decision, Kakashi. I won't do anything without your express permission."

The hour has to be almost up. "Sure, it's fine," Kakashi says. "Talk to him, bring him in here, whatever."

"Okay. Remember that you can change your mind at any time."

Kakashi waves him off. How many times does he have to say that it's fine?

They take forever out in the waiting room, and Kakashi guiltily stops kicking his seat when sensei finally comes in. Alone.

"Your psychologist tells me you obviously paid attention in your interrogation classes. Forty-five minutes and all he got was your name." Sensei drags an adult-sized chair over to sit next to him. "Do you remember why we're here?"

"To prove I'm too mentally unstable for active duty."

"Um. That's not exactly how I would have put it."

"So is he convinced yet?"

"Kakashi, you haven't told him anything. If you're that uncomfortable talking about it, there are some ninja that specialize in mental arts. There are some relatively non-intrusive scans that just give a general idea of where you're at, not actual mind reading."

Kakashi imagines what a Yamanaka might see in his head. He shudders. "I don't want to do that."

"Okay, that's fine. So that leaves us with two options, as I see it. We can forget about this evaluation; I might be able to make a case on your physical condition alone. Or you can try and cooperate with your psychologist, answer a few of his questions."

It's sort of novel, having to prove that he's a total mess. Kakashi sighs. "Fine, I'll talk to him."

"Okay. You can always change your mind. Now, do you want me to stay here with you?"

"Yes. Then you can tell me if I say something I'm not supposed to."

"What do you mean? You can tell the psychologist anything, Kakashi."

"Right." Kakashi unsubtly shoos the man out the door, wanting to just get this over with.

They stay out in the waiting room for a while, obviously talking about him _again_ , but finally come back inside. The hour is definitely over by now, but this is clearly different from Kakashi's previous visits to the psych department.

He moves his chair so he can see both sensei and the psychologist at the same time. Now he just has to convince them that Kakashi is a traumatized six-year-old.

Fortunately sensei is almost criminally easy to read, it's really a wonder the man made it to the position of Hokage, which requires a certain sneaky underhandedness.

The psychologist makes a note, which is why Kakashi hates psychologists. He's just sitting here looking at sensei, it isn't some kind of cry for help.

"My otou-san just died," Kakashi says, not wanting to listen to another round of baby talk.

"And how do you feel about that?"

Kakashi grits his teeth, but this is the only trauma he's lived through in this time, obviously that's what he's going to have to talk about. "Sad."

"Just sad?"

"He saved this village from a dangerous threat," Kakashi says. "He died like the great shinobi that he is. But it's okay to be a little sad." He barely has to glance at sensei for this one; they've already had this conversation.

"You were hurt in that fight, I understand."

"No." Sensei's eye twitches minutely. "Oh, I guess. Danzou-sama had a self-destruct seal, and I got caught up in the blast when they exploded. But just a little. And sensei caught me, so it was fine."

"They… exploded."

Yes, Kakashi had just said that.

"Okay, well, it says in your records that you were hospitalized for a few weeks."

"Oh, I was already in the hospital. Chakra exhaustion. I tried the summoning jutsu. It was stupid."

"I see. If you were in the hospital, how did you come to be standing so close to the blast?"

Kakashi takes a quick glance at sensei, but he doesn't seem to think this is a weird question. "I told you. Otou-san and Danzou-sama were fighting. Danzou-sama is a very bad man."

"So you…?"

"I went to help, of course. I would have been there sooner, but the ANBU who was carrying me chickened out and wouldn't get off the roof."

"You know that both these men are considered elite even among jounin. How exactly were you planning to help?"

Kakashi shrugs. He can't admit to knowledge of the Hiraishin, and truthfully he didn't really have a plan in mind. "I don't know. Something."

"What about the ANBU? Perhaps you should have let them intervene, instead?"

"They were hiding on the roof." Kakashi pauses. "Well, okay, they did what they were supposed to. They assessed the situation and came to a logical conclusion. But that's them, it wasn't their responsibility."

"And it was yours?"

"Of course."

Sensei winces just a little, and Kakashi remembers how angry he'd been with Jiraiya for reminding Kakashi of that. Best not to mention Jiraiya, then.

"Tell me about being in the hospital. You said you were summoning?"

"Yes. Otou-san and I were training, then Danzou came by and I was bored. But I knew I wasn't supposed to be summoning, I just didn't listen. It was my fault."

"Okay. Did you train together often?"

"Yes. We're both ninja, training is important."

"Of course. What else did you do?"

What else? "We ate together? He had missions a lot." Kakashi doesn't need to see sensei's face to know that answer's inadequate. He wracks his brain for something else to say.

"And who stayed with you?"

"I stayed by myself," Kakashi says absently. "You can ask sensei, I'm a good cook."

"Did you cook often?"

"Sure, once I could reach the stove. I got tired of ration bars." Then he has an inspiration. "Oh! He took me out for dango."

"Well, that's nice."

Sensei frowns. "Kakashi, I thought you didn't like sweets."

"Well… usually I don't," Kakashi hedges. "And it was during, you know. That time."

The psychologist narrows his eyes. "What time?"

"That time he kicked off the Third Shinobi World War and everyone hated us?" Kakashi asks dryly. "We couldn't really go out then. He got really upset when people shouted at him, and sometimes they threw rocks and stuff. Then they blew up our house."

"I see. That's a lot to have happen."

Not really. "So are we done then?"

"We need to talk a little about how this has affected you."

Ugh. This is never going to end. "Intermittent panic attacks, flashbacks, insomnia, nightmares," he recites from memory. "Some kind of food thing, I guess. I didn't know about that one until an hour ago."

The man doesn't write any of this down.

"So is that good enough?" Kakashi asks, when the silence stretches.

The psychologist coughs. "Can you give me an idea of the frequency?"

Kakashi huffs. "Fine. Panic attacks, maybe… a couple of times a week? Flashbacks… huh."

"What?"

"I… I don't remember the last time I had one." Vivid, immersive flashbacks have been a feature of Kakashi's entire adult life. Years of work with ANBU psychologists helped him develop the mental conditioning that let him function, but even if he could have somehow recreated it on his own, this immature brain could never have supported it. His problems should be worse, not better.

"That concerns you?"

"Well, I don't know what's changed." They let him think. "I suppose—it's usually worse when I'm fighting?"

"Well that's important to know. And sleeping?"

"I always have nightmares," Kakashi says. Which, he remembers suddenly, he was pretending not to. "Um."

"I'd already guessed that you were having more nightmares than you were telling me about," sensei says. "Every night?"

"Well, sometimes I don't sleep."

The psychologist looks at the clock, then at his notes. "I think I have enough to start here."

Kakashi jumps out of his seat. "So I can go?"

"Yes, you can go. I'll get back to you when we've finished the evaluation."

Finally.

"I think that went well," Kakashi says, the moment they're out of the hospital.

Sensei gives him kind of a weird look. "What?"

Kakashi hesitates. "You don't think he'll sign off the request for leave?"

"Oh, uh, I think he will."


	7. Chapter 7

Warnings: Nightmares, flashbacks, panic attacks

* * *

Sensei is in a weird mood all evening, and he thinks Kushina is, too, though with her it's always harder to tell. So Kakashi isn't surprised to find himself sat down on the couch having another serious talk.

"I'd like you to tell us about your panic attacks," sensei says. "And yes, I know you can handle it yourself, but I think if we started trying to track them, put together a list of your triggers, they might happen less often."

Kakashi had pretty much been expecting that. "Fine."

"And if these flashbacks start happening again, I'd like to hear about that, too."

"It's kind of hard to miss, but okay."

Sensei is giving him that look again, the one that means he was expecting a fight and doesn't quite know what to do now that it hasn't manifested.

"And nightmares," Kakashi prompts. "I'm guessing you want to hear about them, too."

"Yes."

"But won't you be tired?"

Kushina is the one who answers. "There's two of us, so we can take turns, and anyway we're adult ninja used to disrupted sleep. And I think you're not seeing the main point of this, which is to help lessen your nightmares."

"Yes, that," sensei says. Now, is there anything you know of that helps with your nightmares?"

Nothing readily available in this time, so Kakashi just shrugs.

"Has anything we've done so far helped at all?"

There's no accusation in his tone, but Kakashi still feels like an ungrateful wretch, especially since the late night baths and mugs of hot chocolate actually were kind of nice, certainly better than shivering alone in dark. "All of that was okay," he says. "It's a lot of work for you, though."

"Work that's part of my duties as your sensei, and that I'm happy to do."

"I have an idea," Kushina says. "Well, not really mine. I talked to some of my friends today, and Mikoto says that her aunt says that a strict bedtime routine can help with nightmares."

"Oh?" sensei asks.

"No reading or talking about anything upsetting after dinner, bath at seven, pajamas and story at seven-thirty, goodnight kiss, lights out by eight," Kushina reads off her list, which is scrawled on the back of an Ichiraku's receipt.

"Eight!?" Kakashi protests.

"I suppose that makes sense," sensei says. "Why didn't I think of that?"

"I'm not going to bed at eight," Kakashi insists.

"The one thing everyone agreed on was how important it is to talk about them, and not keep things bottled up," Kushina says.

"I do talk about them," Kakashi says, frowning at both of them.

They exchange heavy glances.

"Kakashi, I can tell when you're censoring yourself," sensei says. "You're a smart kid, too smart sometimes, and you've had a hard life. You don't need to be… ashamed, or embarrassed, if you worry about things, even if it's just things you read or heard about somewhere."

Kakashi thinks about it. He supposes if he phrases it in general enough terms, he can pass most of his usual nightmares off as the concerns of an oversensitive child. He's been careful to only share memories that make sense in the context of his current worldview, but he could claim an over-active imagination…

"You're doing it right now," Kushina says. "You're deciding what you think we can handle."

Kakashi flushes, unaware he was being so transparent.

"Something to work on," sensei says.

They think they can help with his nightmares. He'll have to put on a more convincing show when this doesn't work, or they'll be so disappointed.

* * *

To his extreme irritation, they insist on the eight o'clock bedtime, and they won't let him do anything interesting after dinner, so he has a few nightmare-free hours as he lies awake, staring at the ceiling and wondering how anyone can go to sleep this early.

As promised, he goes and wakes up whoever is sleeping on the couch in the main room whenever he has a nightmare, which is usually sensei, since Kushina is still taking missions, and he's well on his way to being the cleanest kid in Konoha by the end of the first week of this new routine.

And sensei is nodding off over the breakfast table.

Kakashi worries that this might be too difficult for him.

"Stop that," sensei says, without lifting his head. "I know what you're thinking, and stop it. I can handle a little missed sleep. Was last night typical for you? Four nightmares in one night?"

"No." Kakashi has had some of the worst sleep of his life these past three days, which is really saying something. He keeps waking up silently screaming with the memory of finding sensei and Kushina's bodies fresh in his mind. That doesn't require any special interpretation.

"It's perfectly normal and understandable for you to be anxious about something happening to us," sensei says, not for the first time.

Kakashi huffs. Yesterday he went to check that sensei was still in the kitchen eleven times while he was trying to make dinner. He could hear him from the other room. That's not normal.

Though it does put a new perspective on what Gai referred to as his 'stalker tendencies'.

"Are you sure you don't want to sleep out in the main room with me?"

Kakashi is sure. Letting them 'take care of him' more actively is only exacerbating his panic about becoming too dependent. Besides, he doesn't have a good explanation for why he doesn't want to fall asleep near Kushina again, and sensei only has another week left of vacation.

* * *

Kakashi jerks awake, clenching his fists until it hurts enough to distract him from his thoughts, forcing himself to breathe quietly, if not evenly. He feels like he's on fire, panic and adrenaline flooding him.

He _hates_ having new nightmares.

After an undetermined amount of time he gives up on the idea of calming down, and his body remembers the pattern he's made for it and carries him to the door of his room, which he pushes open.

Sensei is lying on the couch in his usual careless sprawl, totally unbecoming of an elite ninja. He doesn't wake at the sound of the door opening, but Kakashi is quiet and he hasn't been getting much sleep lately. It's not that strange that he's just lying there. Silent. Still.

Kakashi shudders, the motion getting stuck in his hands, and he has to let go of the door so he doesn't rattle it.

Sensei is fine. Kakashi is being ridiculous and irrational and sensei is fine.

He can't make himself move forward, so he shuffles along the wall and goes into the kitchen instead.

The only sound in the apartment is Kakashi's uneven breathing.

He bites down a whimper, and he can feel blood trickling down his chin.

Blood. He's covered in it.

Stifling another sound, he stumbles to the sink and turns on the water, putting his hands under the spray and trying to scrub off the stain.

He's not sure how long he stands there, washing his hands over and over in the dark, but finally the light clicks on, and he blinks furiously against the blinding brightness.

"Kakashi?" sensei asks, sounding half-asleep and completely, gloriously alive.

The sudden surcease of tension is so acute that Kakashi just collapses, and he would have fallen on the floor if sensei hadn't caught him.

"Kakashi, what are you doing in here? Did you cut your lip? Why—oh hell, what have you done to your hands?"

They're raw and chapped, starting to bleed a little in some places; he's scrubbed the skin right off.

Well. This is going to be difficult to explain.

Sensei abandons his questions and picks Kakashi up, carrying him into the main room.

Kakashi allows himself to be seated on the couch, watches as sensei fusses over his hands, disinfecting them and wrapping them in light bandages. They hurt, but on his personal pain scale it's hardly worth mentioning, and the injury certainly isn't life-threatening. But it seems like a lot of effort to explain that, and anyway, the longer sensei is occupied with playing medic, the longer he can put off answering any questions.

But sensei waits until Kakashi has been bathed and dressed in clean pajamas before clearing his throat.

Kakashi jumps. He hadn't realized he was still so tense.

Sensei gives him a sad smile. "Why don't we concentrate on calming down for now?"

Kakashi watches as sensei rearranges the blankets and pillows on the couch, and he does actually start to relax a little, because it's just like sensei to fuss over something so silly.

"Why don't you come sit with me for a bit? We could read for a while."

Kakashi is tired and his hands hurt, and he doesn't really want to go stare at the ceiling for a few hours. So long as he doesn't fall asleep, it should be okay. He sits on the far end of the couch.

Sensei doesn't comment on that, just selects a book at random and starts reading.

They usually sit so that Kakashi can see the words. He's pretty sure at this point that sensei has realized he has trouble with some kanji—he's not like poor Gaara, who obviously couldn't read at all, but if it wasn't necessary for a mission report, Kakashi probably didn't learn it—and he's always careful to read slowly, sometimes too slowly, and follow along with his finger so Kakashi can clearly see the words he's reading.

Kakashi can't see a thing from this angle.

After a few minutes of listening to the sound of sensei's voice, and absorbing exactly none of the actual content of his words, Kakashi scoots a little closer, than a little more, until he is leaning ever-so-slightly against sensei's arm. That's better.

The book turns out to be an extremely dry analysis of farming trends in Fire Country. Kakashi can't imagine why sensei even has this book.

"Are you feeling better?" sensei asks.

Kakashi tries to tense up, but the book has some kind of soporific effect. Sneaky.

"Can you talk about it? I don't want to pressure you, but… Kakashi, I'm very concerned. You're hurting yourself."

"I wasn't trying to hurt myself," Kakashi says. "I thought I had blood on my hands, and I wasn't really thinking very clearly."

Sensei puts the book down. "Did you dream about me dying again?"

Kakashi clings to sensei's sleeve, even though it's childish and silly and makes his hands hurt. "I dreamed you killed yourself."

"Like your father?"

Kakashi's whole body freezes up. But his father hadn't… did he imagine that? Was this trip to the past just some incredibly vivid dream?

Sensei is holding him, anchoring him until his panic subsides. "Sorry, sorry, I mean was it like in your dream? The one you told me about?"

Had he told sensei that? He must have. He might have to start writing some of this down, so he can keep his story straight. Except that would be monumentally stupid, because he would definitely get caught.

"Yeah," Kakashi says. "Like that."

"That's not going to happen."

"I checked, but you didn't have a pulse, you weren't breathing, your heart wasn't beating. I thought the whole world was going to end, but it didn't, it kept going, and the blood dried and you were still dead and I was still there so I got up and I went to the police station and they asked me a bunch of questions and then they let me go in the back and wash my hands…" Kakashi is rubbing his hands together, and it hurts, but it's a good pain, distracting.

Sensei scoops him up and hugs him tightly. "I would never do that to you. Never."

Kakashi knows that. It doesn't really make sense that he projected sensei into that memory, he doesn't need sensei's assurances to know that that particular scenario is unlikely in the extreme.

"Is that what happened in your other dream? About your father?"

Kakashi nods.

"Kakashi… did your father ever talk to you about this? Tell you that he was going to… to kill himself?"

Had that already started? Did sensei and Jiraiya find them before his father started with that kind of talk? He shrugs.

"Okay, well, that's not what happened. Your father uncovered a serious threat against the village, and he died protecting Konoha, and you."

If Kakashi starts trying to deny that his previous life happened, he'll go mad, but he nods anyway.

Sensei sighs. "I guess that doesn't make the possibility any less scary. You're safe here, now, with Kushina and me, and nothing is going to happen to us."

Not yet, Kakashi thinks.

"Okay, well… let's read some more."

It really is the most boring book in existence. Sensei doesn't seem to notice, droning on and on about rainfall patterns.

Kakashi rests his head on sensei's arm. He's fallen asleep like this once before, after a particularly ridiculous challenge, filthy and exhausted and miles from the village, with his head against Gai's shoulder. Nothing bad happened. That was okay. This is okay.

Just this once.

* * *

Sometimes Kakashi thinks that all he does these days is eat. And bathe.

Sensei had the courtesy to put together a detailed diet plan, complete with explanations for the food choice and portion sizes, then explain the whole thing to Kakashi.

He appreciates it, even if he suspects he's being humored.

But he's only allowed to do basic warmup and fitness exercises, which he's been able to do since he could walk. Kakashi just keeps reminding himself that it lets him avoid any awkward questions about kenjutsu or ninjutsu. And it won't be that long before sensei and Kushina both have a mission at the same time.

On the one hand, this is fortunate, because Kakashi is seriously considering going mad from boredom.

On the other hand, he's afraid sensei has already gone mad.

"I think I'm going to make a chart," sensei says one day. "You can help me."

The finished chart is, according to sensei, a work of art. It has a list of every place in Konoha any of them might conceivably be, plus 'on a mission', and different colored tacks for the three of them. Kushina tells him he has no sense of style, and doodles little cartoon characters for each of them instead of just plain tacks.

Kakashi thinks it's the stupidest thing he's ever seen.

"This way you'll always know where we are."

It's not like Kakashi doesn't know where they are, he's just irrationally convinced that might change at any moment if he's not actively watching them.

He spends a lot of time glaring at the chart. He also doesn't think that he looks quite so much like a toddler with a mop of hair twice his size.

"I'm concerned that you don't have a sense of permanence," sensei says on another day. "We should fix up your room."

Kakashi protests that it isn't his room, and is ignored.

He points out that sensei might need the desk for his work, and is drafted into hauling the desk into the main room.

"Why would I want to work back here?" sensei says. "The lighting is bad, and I'll be left out of everything."

"Maybe you won't be so easily distracted," Kakashi says. "And this isn't going to fit through the door."

They spend the whole afternoon disassembling the damn thing, then moving all the furniture around so there's room to put it back together in the main room.

They're left with an extra piece of wood.

"It's probably not that important," sensei says.

Kakashi knows it's going to collapse on him one day, and he's not going to have any sympathy.

When Kushina gets back, they all go shopping. She seems unduly upset that Kakashi doesn't have much besides his clothes and weapons.

"What else would I need?" he asks.

Apparently he needs storage units for his clothes, more clothes to put in them, posters of people he's never heard of, little kid books that still aren't about fighting, and a hideous orange rug.

"I don't have any money to pay for this," he protests.

"I'll make the village pay for it," sensei says. "You're not the one who blew up your own house."

"Is that where my rent is coming from?" Kakashi asks.

Sensei is suspiciously silent.

"I am paying rent, aren't I? I'm not just living off the two of you?" Kakashi's voice is starting to rise. "So not only am I keeping you from going on missions, but now I'm freeloading?"

"You get a stipend while you're on medical leave," Kushina says. "And for being an orphan. I'm sure we can negotiate something."

Sensei looks like he's about to protest.

"Minato. That's fair."

They stare intensely at each other for about five minutes, right in the middle of the store, and then sensei huffs and concedes.

Now why doesn't that ever work for Kakashi?

He's so pleased that Kushina saw his point that he doesn't argue as strenuously for back-rent as he could have, and he deigns to pick out a shuriken-patterned blanket just like his old one.

He also buys a small dog bowl, which is just wishful thinking on his part.

* * *

Sensei goes back on active duty, and he is sent on an A-rank mission almost the moment he sets foot in the Missions Office.

Kakashi wants to show everyone, including himself, that this is fine, but he spends almost the entire three weeks in a state of acute anxiety, and goes back to having panic attacks at least once a day.

It's incredibly frustrating, and he can't even be too annoyed that Kushina mysteriously and coincidentally decided to take vacation time for those three weeks.

Technically she only has two weeks available, but she marches off to have words with the Personnel Office, and Kakashi has full confidence in her ability to get her own way.

By the second week he can't keep any food down, and he's banned from even the light training he was previously allowed, and he's thoroughly miserable.

"He'll be back soon," Kushina says, late one night when he's changing pajamas yet again. "He's actually a lot smarter than he looks. He'll be fine."

Kakashi knows that, he does, but sensei doesn't even know the Hiraishin yet, anything could happen to him. He selfishly wishes it were Kushina out on the mission, because she's the Jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi and what could possibly happen to her? It took a power-crazed Obito to take her down last time, and he's still an Academy student now.

Of course, Madara is out there somewhere.

"I'll be fine, too," she says, and hugs him.

Maybe because he's thinking of Obito capturing the Kyuubi's mind with his Sharingan at that precise moment, or because of that faint-possibly-imaginary hint of the Kyuubi in Kushina's scent, or just the stress of worrying about sensei, but whatever it is his flashbacks choose that precise moment to make a reappearance.

A malevolent chakra permeates the air, and he's never felt it before but he knows what it must be. The Kyuubi. Kushina. Sensei. The baby.

He spins on his heel, sandals digging into the mud—no, floorboards?—and he runs towards their safehouse, except, there's a couch in the way? In the woods? And someone is touching him, even though he _knows_ he's alone here, he would have sensed any intruders—

"Kakashi! Kakashi, can you hear me?"

And the image shatters and Kakashi is back in sensei and Kushina's apartment, years before and after the Kyuubi attack, and Kushina is shaking him and looking as panicked as he's ever seen her.

"I can hear you," he says, and it comes out sounding funny because his teeth keep clacking together. "I'm getting dizzy."

She stops shaking him and hugs him again, all but crushing him in her arms.

Kakashi can't even protest, assuming it would have made a difference, because he's too caught up in a growing revelation.

He's never broken out of a flashback so easily. Ever. Usually, he wakes up hours later, with some unfortunate ANBU retrieval squad lurking around, sometimes miles from the village depending on what he was seeing and how many obstacles he encountered. He's woken up covered in bruises from crashing into things, sprained ankles, once he almost drowned. He never realizes what's going on in the real world, caught entirely by the perfect recall of his stolen Sharingan.

Except, he doesn't have that Sharingan anymore.

He's shaking, and hopefully Kushina thinks it's just a reaction to the flashback, because this is. This is something. This is _everything_.

He'd learned to control the flashbacks and the nightmares, sort of, to get them down to a manageable level, but, if whatever gave him an eidetic memory hasn't followed him back into the past, then these memories will _fade_. Things will get better, really better.

Maybe, he reminds himself sternly. _Maybe_ things will get better. He can't base all his hopes on a single incident, and any evidence of his nightmares being just a little less vivid, not quite as clear, is probably biased.

"Well," Kushina says, releasing him moments before the lack of oxygen becomes a serious concern. "You were right about that being hard to miss."

She gives him some ointment for his knees, which he bruised quite spectacularly against the couch, and takes him out for ramen.

* * *

He jumps on sensei the moment he walks in the door, shouting a welcome before sensei can even get a word out, and he can't even be embarrassed about it.

Sensei picks him up and hugs him, then frowns. "Have you lost weight?"

Kakashi doesn't want to talk about that right now. "I think my nightmares are getting better!"

"That's great! So you've been sleeping better?"

"Well, not getting better yet," Kakashi concedes, because there's no way Kushina won't rat him out on such an outrageous lie. "But they _might_ get better. I'm pretty sure."

Sensei gives him kind of a sad smile and ruffles his hair. "I can't tell you how happy it makes me to hear you say that."

Kakashi tries to arch away from the hair ruffling and finds that sensei is holding a scroll. "You have another mission already?" he asks, trying not to sound like a sulky kid. He once went almost four months without seeing his father, and it's not like Kakashi has even been allowed to stay by himself. He can handle himself.

"Actually," sensei says, "I requested a reassignment. I'm joining a research team."

Kushina has a number of tricks to win arguments with sensei. Her favorite seems to be the intense stare, which never seems to work for Kakashi, or shouting a lot, which isn't really his style. However-

Kakashi reaches up and yanks on sensei's hair, which is conveniently in reach.

"Ow! Hey!"

"How are you going to get famous if you hole up in the library all day?" Kakashi demands.

"What makes you think I want to be famous?"

Kushina comes in to see what all the commotion is about, and collapses against the doorway she's laughing so hard.

"But how will you get to be Hokage?"

"Are you getting me mixed up with Kushina? I'm not the one who wants to be Hokage!"

Hmm. He does have a point there. If he hadn't known the man would one day be Hokage, Kakashi would never have thought that he had any interest in the position. Still, something must change.

"This is something I want to do, not just because of you. I like researching new jutsu, and while I can scrawl down a few notes on the back of the mission scroll while running to my next assignment—just ask Jiraiya-sensei—that's not the ideal conditions. Also I tend to fall a lot." He grimaces. "Actually, I'd rather you didn't ask; knowing sensei, he'd tell you all the embarrassing stories."

Kakashi releases his grip. "Well, if you're sure," he says.

He's a little worried sensei is going to be annoyed, but he just gives him a suffocating Kushina-hug and carries him into the kitchen, where Kushina has bullied one of the restaurants that normally doesn't do takeaway into making them a feast.

* * *

Kakashi can't say he has a breakthrough, exactly. It takes time to recover from sensei's mission, both mentally and physically, but he feels like things are better.

It's an attitude thing, he decides. He still has nightmares and panics for no good reason and can't even think about resuming kenjutsu training (not that he would be allowed to) but… he's hopeful. Just a little.

Though he wishes he hadn't remembered that Madara is out there, because now he worries about Kushina. Not as much as he worried about sensei, thankfully—and should he feel guiltier about that?—but Madara is one man. What are the odds she'll just happen to run into him?

He tries not to think about it.

Sensei is very bothered by how upset Kakashi was while he was away, even though he tries to pretend that he isn't.

This mostly manifests as sensei being kind of clingy, which is fine with Kakashi, because it makes him look a little less clingy by comparison.

They spend the morning together, doing Kakashi's conditioning exercises, reading together, and doing all the household chores and errands. Kakashi is starting to realize that he was neglecting a few things around his future apartment.

The best thing, though, is that sensei stops throwing a fit every time Kakashi goes near the stove and lets him help him cook.

Kakashi is very skilled at a limited number of basic, nutritionally balanced meals. Sensei says they're boring.

Sensei still has an impressive array of cookbooks and is determined to pick the most creative dishes possible—probably Kushina's influence—and more often than not it ends in total disaster, smoke alarms, and apologies to their neighbors.

But it's… kind of nice, cooking together, and they get better at it. Some of the stuff sensei comes up with is actually pretty good.

In the afternoons, sensei has his shift at the research library. The first two days, Kushina happens to not have a mission and stays at the house with Kakashi. The third day she is out, and Kakashi, to his immense irritation, still isn't allowed to stay by himself.

"I'm very responsible," he says.

"You're not winning this argument," sensei says.

Kakashi fumes.

But the research library is actually really, really cool. Kakashi hasn't spent a whole lot of time in libraries; it was much more efficient to learn new jutsu in the field, once he had the Sharingan, and he relied on his own imagination and observations to tweak Chidori.

But this is just… neat.

The other researchers are kind of skeptical when sensei shows up with a little kid in tow, but they stop complaining when Kakashi begs them to explain what they're working on, and actually asks intelligent questions about their answers.

He's pretty sure they think of him as some kind of mascot, but whatever, he's learned more about jutsu in this one afternoon than his entire stint at the Academy. And if is the only access he has to the shinobi arts, between sensei's draconian dictates about training and his own bizarre ineptitude with ninjutsu, well, he'll take it.

He babbles cheerfully to Kushina all the next day about the new storage seal one of the researchers is working on, which can safely contain living people and is tentatively going to be a way to smuggle people into enemy territory.

"I had no idea you were so interested in seals," she says, when he succumbs to sensei's death glare and pauses to take a bite of his food.

Oops? He takes a bigger bite so he doesn't have to answer.

"You know, my village was famous for our expertise in sealing," Kushina says, looking very sad for a moment. "I could show you some things, if you wanted."

"Yes!" Kakashi says with his mouth full.


	8. Chapter 8

Kakashi has some good days and he has some bad days. This is more of a medium day.

He's dozing off at the breakfast table when there's a knock at the door. He had three nightmares last night and can't even muster up the will to protest Kushina ordering ramen; someone else can deal with their early-morning guest.

"Namikaze."

Kakashi is suddenly feeling much more awake. He almost falls out of his chair in his haste to run to the door, and right there, wearing a standard jounin uniform and looking disarmingly human, is Orochimaru.

"Orochimaru-sama?" Sensei is as tired as Kakashi is, and blinks stupidly at the man for a few seconds.

Kakashi panics.

His muscles lock, he loses feeling in his hands, he can hear his breath coming too harsh, too fast. If Orochimaru is a threat, if he's here to kill sensei or rip Kushina open and study how she works, Kakashi isn't going to be able to do a damn thing to stop it, he'll just be standing her uselessly and freaking out.

It takes him a long time to calm down, because he can't stop imagining all the things Orochimaru might be here to do, what might happen.

"Breathe with me," sensei says patiently, sitting beside him the whole time.

Having someone sit with him, and talk with him, has proven helpful in the past, but just now Kakashi appreciates Kushina casually menacing Orochimaru much more. She is more than a match for him, he reminds himself over and over. He may want an Uchiha body, but he doesn't have one yet. She can crush him beneath her heel.

Orochimaru just waits it out, propping up the doorway like he has nothing better to do, holding something that's too small to be a whole human body.

Kakashi hopes it isn't body parts.

"Is that a human head?" he asks, when he can speak again.

Sensei makes a sound like a toad being stepped on.

"Why would you think that?" Orochimaru asks. He doesn't sound offended; merely curious.

"It's about the right size," Kakashi says. "And it's you."

"I'm not in the habit of carrying human heads around," Orochimaru says. "Which you wouldn't know, since I don't know you, and you don't know me. It's unsanitary, and exposing them to the elements adds too many variables."

"And it would be wrong!" sensei shouts, much louder than really necessary in the small apartment.

"…yes," Orochimaru says, like this genuinely had not occurred to him.

Kakashi frowns.

"Not that this hasn't been a delightfully disturbing addition to our morning," Kushina says, "but what do you even want?"

"Ah, yes. Namikaze, I don't know how you do it."

Sensei blinks. "Huh?"

"Do I interfere in your life?"

"Well, yes?" Kushina says. "Seeing as you are right here? Interfering?"

She is ignored. "What I would like, is for the lot of you to leave me alone."

"This is our apartment," Kushina points out.

"I woke up out of a sound sleep last night with an overwhelming urge to summon something for no reason, which, unlike certain deviant former teammate of mine, is not something I'm in the habit of. Summons have lives of their own and better things to do than to loiter around the human world. But I can take a hint, and what do I get?" He holds up his burden, which turns out to be a small animal completely cocooned in blankets.

"That's the weirdest snake I've ever seen," Kushina says.

"Are you blind? It's a dog!"

"I didn't know you could summon dogs," sensei says.

Kakashi doesn't know if he's ever seen someone so annoyed. "Are you two complete idiots? Of course I can't summon dogs. Manda himself turned up; for some reason, he didn't think I would believe anyone else. Apparently, someone's idiot student summoned this little miscreant, and it's been inconsolable ever since. Given that said idiot is unlikely to be summoning anything any time soon, the animals have taken it upon themselves to deliver the bundle of joy, and I happened to be the lucky person who is both in close physical proximity to the summoner and has a summon whose territory borders the dogs."

"I don't follow," sensei says.

But Kakashi does. He jumps up, sending his chair clattering to the floor. "Pakkun!?"

Orochimaru arches one eyebrow. "So that was true? Jiraiya managed to summon himself as a genin, but he was five years older than you, and, well, obviously he did it completely wrong."

Kakashi ignores that, claiming the little puppy and hugging him tightly.

Pakkun expresses his displeasure by sticking his cold nose in Kakashi's ear.

Kakashi tries to relax his death-grip a little and starts to cry.

There's a brief silence.

"Um," sensei says.

"Shut up," Orochimaru says. "I can't believe Jiraiya thinks you're a genius; actually, given the source, I can. But I don't. So just be quiet and listen. Boy, I'm certainly not acting as messenger until you're old enough to summon properly, so you'd better do a good job taking care of it, because if it decides to dismiss itself, you're just going to have to wait. Don't mess this up. Or make your sensei go fetch it for you, he has a summoning contract of his own."

"I summoned him properly," Kakashi says, offended. "That's how I got him."

"Is that it?" sensei asks Orochimaru.

"Yes." He looks at Kakashi. "You're interesting."

Then he leaves.

"He's… not what I expected," Kakashi says.

Kushina and sensei look at each other, and visibly decide not to comment.

"Well," Kushina says, "I guess we're getting a dog."

They spend the whole morning collecting supplies. Kakashi has no intention of neglecting Pakkun, both for his own sake and because he doesn't want to wait years to see him again.

They spend two hours in the first store looking for a little dog bed. Kakashi had always let his pack sleep on his bed (or bedroll, or the ground, basically wherever he happened to be when he summoned them), and hadn't even known dog beds were a thing, so he already knows that he can't trust his own knowledge to make sure Pakkun has everything he needs. He asks the owner a couple of questions, and then he has Pakkun try out the different beds to see which one he likes.

The owner tries to insist that that isn't allowed, but how else would you know? Kakashi isn't a dog.

Kushina yells at the man until he stops complaining, and eventually they find the perfect bed.

Sensei insists they take a break at that point, even though it's still early, and they end up at a barbecue restaurant. Kushina announces that she's not hungry and is going to go take care of something, which would have made Kakashi instantly suspicious but he's busy trying to tempt Pakkun into eating something. Is he too little to eat meat? Kakashi just doesn't have that much experience with dogs this young. By the time he met his pack the first time around, they fed and bossed him.

 _Especially_ Pakkun.

Sensei keeps making comments about not letting the dog on the table, but he isn't anywhere near the fire, Kakashi isn't an idiot.

Kushina turns up again just as they're finishing, and she has a young Inuzuka Tsume in tow.

Sensei signals for another menu as Kakashi immediately starts peppering her with questions. This woman is (going to be?) head of the Inuzuka clan, and is the undisputed authority on dog care.

Kakashi already has a food bowl from when he decorated his room, and the dog bed from this morning, but with Tsume's help, they find food, a water bowl, soap, a little brush, and toys in time for sensei to be only slightly late for his shift.

"I'm going to owe Tsume a favor for the next ten years," sensei says on his way out the door.

Sometimes Kakashi doesn't understand him.

Tsume even promises to send over some ideas for an appropriate training regimen, because the last thing Kakashi wants is to push Pakkun too hard, but he also can't let himself forget that he's a summon, not a pet, and a sentient being in his own right.

Kakashi suspects it won't be long before Pakkun surpasses him and asserts himself as the head of this little pack. But until then, he needs to be fed, shown how to get outside (sensei promises to talk to the super tomorrow about installing dog doors), bathed (he still hates that, but Kakashi insists), and tucked into bed.

"Well, I suppose this gives us a new bedtime routine," Kushina says.

That's a good point. Little Pakkun is drooping by eight, so Kakashi decides that just this once he won't complain about having to go to bed at such a ridiculously early hour. He tucks Pakkun into his cute little bed, then settles it on his futon and finds a comfortable position, using one side as a pillow.

"I think you've missed the point," sensei says.

"Hush," Kushina says. "This is the cutest thing I've ever seen."

Kakashi smiles at his tiny friend. He's young, and it won't ever be exactly the same, but he's still Pakkun.

He closes his eyes and goes to sleep.

* * *

Kakashi dreams about Rin's death. The frantic race to reach her in time, leaving two comrades exhausted somewhere behind him. The fight against her (false) attackers, always hovering right on the edge of impossible. Dragging her to Konoha, ignoring her protests. Her blood. Her smile. Her last breath on his face.

Then he really can feel that breath, but that's not right, because he was wearing a mask, and anyway, she's dead. He opens his eyes, but it's dark. He's in the study, in his bed, and… Pakkun is licking his face.

"I hate that," Kakashi whispers.

Pakkun rolls over onto his face, and Kakashi falls back asleep.

* * *

"Good morning, sleepyhead," Kushina says.

"Meh," Kakashi says into his pillow.

"Time to wake up!"

Pakkun yips.

"Okay, okay," Kakashi says, forcing himself to leave the comfortable nest of blankets. He'd just as soon keep sleeping, but Pakkun needs his breakfast.

Once he's sure Kakashi is up, Pakkun trots out the door and into the kitchen, leaving his human to stumble along behind him.

Kakashi finds the special mix Tsume recommended and measures it out into Pakkun's bowl, only then becoming aware of sensei watching him from the breakfast table.

"What?"

"I haven't decided if I'm very happy or very annoyed," sensei says.

"Um, okay?"

"How did you sleep last night?"

Ah. "Fine. I had a nightmare, but I fell asleep again before I got up." Kakashi bites his lip. "Was that bad?"

"No, that's… that's great."

"Told you," Kushina says.

"Can we get a different table?" Kakashi asks. "This is too narrow, and Pakkun is feeling left out."

Sensei sighs.

* * *

A few days later, Kakashi and Pakkun get some time to themselves. Pakkun has not been well-behaved at sensei's office and Kushina has a mission, so Kakashi is being allowed to watch himself for a whole afternoon. It's boring to just sit around the apartment by himself, and sensei took all the interesting books for his research, so Kakashi and Pakkun are walking around the village. Sensei suggested he try talking to people, but right now he's just talking to Pakkun.

Tsume's advice basically boiled down to: summons are smarter than us, teach him to speak human and then he'll tell you what's best for him. Until then, make sure he exercises, but don't try any ninja training.

So, walking.

If Kakashi moves at a normal civilian speed, and Pakkun stretches his little legs, neither gets left behind. This isn't Kakashi's preferred way to get around, but he doesn't need to be told that it's insulting to Pakkun's dignity to be carried, and despite his valiant efforts to keep up with Kakashi, he isn't quite ready to jump on rooftops yet.

Though Kakashi has had to cover his smile a few times imagining this tiny version of Pakkun taking the ANBU patrol routes. Even the lowest buildings are at least twenty times his height.

There are a bunch of people buying food at the market, and Kakashi and Pakkun amuse themselves tracking scents for a while. Pakkun is only interested in food scents, but there are plenty to choose from in the large, crowded market.

"Hey, watch where you're going!"

Kakashi doesn't move an inch. "Maybe you should take your own advice, you almost stepped on Pakkun."

The other boy sneers at him. "Why don't you run on home, kid? We're playing ninja here!"

"Who's a kid?" Kakashi demands, jerking a thumb at his hitai-ate.

"No way!"

There, now he can tell sensei he talked to someone. Kakashi heads off in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately, there are more kids down this way. The Academy must have let out. It seems there's a fight going on, which Kakashi wants nothing to do with. Maybe Pakkun will forgive him a ride, just this once.

Kakashi narrows his eyes. Actually, it looks less like a fight and more like four guys beating up on another one. He doesn't remember much from his own Academy days, but while rejecting teams as a new jounin-sensei, Kakashi learned that too many Academy students think being a ninja is the same as being a bully. This lot will learn that that's false or they'll wash out, their victim will learn to protect himself or he'll wash out; it's not really any of Kakashi's business.

"You're trash, just like your father!" one kid yells.

"Yeah, loser!" his friend says, then kicks the boy on the ground.

Okay, fuck it. If their victim is embarrassed about being rescued by a kid, he can just deal with it.

Kakashi takes a few seconds to push Pakkun into a mostly clean box behind a trash bin, then dives into the fray.

The four bullies are bigger and stronger than he is, but who isn't? He guesses they're getting ready to graduate—or fail, as seems much more likely.

He introduces himself by kicking someone in the back of the knee. It buckles, the kid stumbles, and Kakashi uses his back as leverage to leap into the air and scissor kick two of the idiots in the face. That pretty much uses up the advantage of surprise, and after that he loses track of the fight, dodging blows and striking back whenever an opening presents itself.

The whole fight takes maybe two minutes, and then there are four boys groaning on the ground and one covering his head.

And Kakashi doesn't freak out once. He'd tell sensei about it, but then he'd never be allowed outside again, and also beating up on civilian kids isn't exactly noteworthy.

"Hey, you okay?" Kakashi asks, offering the kid he rescued a hand up.

Kakashi ends up being pulled to the ground instead.

"Are _you_ okay?" the kid asks, peering anxiously at Kakashi from two inches away.

Kakashi just gawks at him.

It's _Gai_.

Many of Kakashi's best memories involve this man, but naturally the one his mind chooses to dwell on is Gai pressing the Hokage mantle against his chest, fire and determination in his face as he goes to his death.

"Hey, hey, did you hit your head?"

"Uh… no," Kakashi croaks.

"How did you do that? That was awesome!"

"Um, practice."

"I practice all the time, but _I_ can't do that. And you're so little!"

That wakes Kakashi's brain up. "I'm not little! I'm almost seven!"

"Well I'm ten, so that makes you little!"

Kakashi can't really argue with that logic.

"Do you go to the Academy? I don't remember seeing you."

"I graduated already," Kakashi says. He feels equal to getting up now, and he steps on someone's hand without remorse on his way back to Pakkun.

"Really? That's so cool."

Kakashi smiles a little. Some things never change.

"Are you on a ninja mission? Spies? Assassins? Assassinating spies?"

"Just walking my dog," Kakashi says.

"Oh. Is it a ninja dog?"

"Yeah, he is."

"Cool."

Kakashi brushes some dirt off Pakkun, who looks deeply annoyed at being left in a box. "If you want to fight, you have to get stronger first."

"Me?"

"I mean Pakkun. But I guess you, too. If some idiots are talking shit about your dad, just punch them."

"Oh. You heard that?"

"Yeah. Don't worry, I get it."

"You do?"

Kakashi stops, but Gai just looks sort of confused. "You don't recognize me? The Hatake brat? My dad was the village disgrace for like eight months."

"Oh, _Hatake_ ," Gai says. Then he flushes. "I, uh, didn't hear about that."

Gai is a terrible liar, Kakashi thinks fondly. "It doesn't matter."

"I thought he was a hero now?"

"Now that he's dead, yeah."

"Oh. Sorry."

"It's not your fault. Sensei and Kushina-san are looking after me." Kakashi doesn't really want to have this conversation, not even with Gai. "So are you playing ninja or something?"

Gai looks away. "No. None of the other kids want to play with me."

Oh. "Sorry," Kakashi says lamely.

"It doesn't matter. I should go help my dad, anyway. Uh, I mean…"

"You don't have to lie, it's not like I want everyone else to be an orphan, too," Kakashi says. He doesn't actually know anything about Gai's family, or what his life and career were like before they intersected Kakashi's, which makes him feel like a really shitty friend. "What are you helping him with?"

"Missions and stuff."

"Your dad's a ninja?"

"Yeah! And one day, I'm going to be an awesome ninja, too!"

"Definitely."

Gai turns to look at him. "You really think so?"

Kakashi is a little taken aback. "Of course. Why not?"

"Because no one thinks I can do it? Because I'm still in the baby class even though kids my age are graduating already? And kids your age, apparently."

Kakashi takes the time to think before he opens his mouth again. He didn't meet Gai until he was a successful and valued jounin, and criticism of his total ineptitude with anything not taijutsu and his ebullient personality just rolled off him. But Gai had implied—and outright stated—that he was a lot like Lee when he was younger, and Lee was very insecure in himself and his abilities until he finally passed the chuunin exam.

He still hasn't thought of something to say when they arrive in the civilian district. There's a fair bit of new construction going on down here, and Kakashi spots a genin team carrying wooden beams down the road. Maybe Gai's father is their sensei? Gai was such a good jounin-sensei, after all, maybe this is where he learned it.

Kakashi is wondering if he'll recognize Gai's father when he sees him, then he does and wonders how he could ever have thought that. The man looks exactly like a grown-up Gai in every way, except for the most unfortunate mustache to ever exist. Kakashi can't stop staring at it.

"Dad!" Gai shouts, right in Kakashi's ear.

It's pretty much like watching Gai and Lee interact, Kakashi thinks, so long as he doesn't look at the mustache. If he holds his hand up he can sort of block it from view.

"Who's your friend?" the man asks.

"Oh! This is…" Gai leans over and whispers, loudly, "What's your name?"

Kakashi bites back a laugh. "Kakashi," he whispers back.

"This is Kakashi!" Gai announces to the whole street. "And this is my dad, Maito Dai! My name's Gai, by the way."

"Hatake?" Dai asks.

Kakashi tries not to roll his eyes. "Yeah, that's me."

Now that the mustache isn't distracting him, he notices one other key difference between this man and Gai. He isn't wearing a flak jacket.

Now, it could just be a style choice. Virtually all chuunin wear the jacket constantly, but jounin don't always.

"You're Namikaze's boy?" Dai asks.

"I-I guess," Kakashi stutters. He's never been referred to that way before.

"So what are you boys up to?"

"We came to help!" Gai declares.

Dai smiles. "That isn't really necessary, son. You can go and play with your friends."

"I want to help, and Kakashi said he would, too!"

Dai looks at Kakashi, who shrugs.

"Well, I suppose you do these sorts of missions anyway… I could try and put your name on the roster?"

"Don't worry about it," Kakashi says quickly. The last thing he needs is for sensei to find out that he's volunteering for missions when he's supposed to be on leave.

"If you're sure…"

"Come on, I'll show you what to do!" Gai shouts, pulling Kakashi along by the back of his shirt.

Except for the genin carrying wood, everyone here is an adult. Gai seems to be a regular feature, as no one pays him any mind, but a few of them look askance at Kakashi.

He ignores them. Just let them try and throw him out. There have to be some advantages to being That Hatake Brat.

In Kakashi's inexpert opinion, Gai is big for a ten-year-old. Certainly he's taller and more muscular than Sasuke or Naruto, and they were eleven, or were they twelve? Twelve is basically the same as ten, right? Anyway, Gai's job turns out to be pretty much the same as the genin: take a thing, move it someplace else. And he's good at it. No wonder he always won those rock-carrying challenges.

Well, Kakashi can carry stuff, too.

Except maybe he can't, because after an embarrassingly brief time Kakashi is starting to get really tired. He casts a quick glance at Gai, who is sweating and obviously working hard, but hasn't lost his rhythm at all as he moves rocks from one pile to another.

Pakkun trots along beside Kakashi, offering moral support, and he knows it's foolish and immature but he desperately does not want to admit that this might possibly be too much for him.

Fortunately for his pride, he's interrupted by a familiar chakra signature.

Unfortunately in every other possible way, it's Orochimaru.

"Dog Boy."

Great. On a scale of nicknames, that ranks below Copy Ninja, but way above Friend-killer so he supposes he can live with it. Maybe Namikaze's boy will catch on.

At least his annoyance keeps him from freaking out.

"Orochimaru-sama," he says politely. He can't really imagine Orochimaru doing manual labor. What is he doing here?

"You really summoned that dog."

Kakashi raises an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"And why couldn't you summon it again?"

"I knocked myself unconscious from chakra exhaustion," Kakashi says. "I almost died."

"That should not have happened."

In his most of his previous encounters with Orochimaru, Kakashi was too busy trying not to die to really see how irritating the man is. "Well, obviously I wasn't very good at it."

"No, you were _too_ good at it. Very unusual."

Kakashi hasn't made any real effort to conceal his skills, partly because trauma keeps him from using most of them, but also because he's confident that even if anyone notices something odd, they won't guess the true cause. But Orochimaru's interest has him worried. Who can fathom how the man's mind works?

"You knew I was here before I spoke."

It wasn't a question, so Kakashi doesn't respond.

"Follow me."

Yeah, that's not happening. "I don't have to listen to you," Kakashi says. "You're not in my direct chain of command, and I'm on medical leave."

Orochimaru frowns. "I am a jounin and you are a genin. I could make you listen to me."

"You could carry me. You could beat me in battle. But you can't make me listen to you."

"Hmm," Orochimaru says. "Very well, I concede the point. Follow me anyway."

Kakashi huffs, annoyed. Maybe if he just goes along with this Orochimaru will go away faster. He doesn't really think anything is going to happen in the middle of the village, in broad daylight, in front of a dozen civilians and a genin team.

But if Orochimaru starts trying to lead him into any secret laboratories, Kakashi is calling it quits.

He chases Orochimaru across partially finished rooftops, along support beams and across a pool of filthy water. It's all pretty pointless, and he's starting to think Orochimaru's later madness was just a sign of, well, madness.

"Now carry that," Orochimaru says, pointing to an immense cinderblock, "to there." He points to the top of a roof.

This is just a waste of time.

They've gathered a crowd, including Gai.

Gai whistles. "Can you really do that?"

Dammit. Now Kakashi is going to actually do it.

The block is extremely heavy, and doesn't offer much by way of good handgrips. But chakra can compensate for all manner of ills, and he eventually gets it up onto his back and manages a fast walk up the wall.

Orochimaru bends his knees, then executes a vertical leap right up onto the same roof.

Showoff.

And then he pushes Kakashi off the roof.

The rock tries to fall first, but Kakashi twists in the air and gets underneath it. He channels a burst of chakra into his feet as he lands, overcompensating and leaving a small crater. Embarrassing. But he gets the balance in his arms and back just right, and the block doesn't so much as bump him.

"Hmm," Orochimaru says.

"That was so cool!" Gai shouts. "I can't wait to be a ninja!"

Kakashi sways a bit, setting his block down. "Are we done yet?"

"What exactly is going on over here?" Gai's father asks. "O-Orochimaru-sama? Can I, er, help you with something? Sir?"

"I'm just escorting this boy home," Orochimaru says, and Kakashi barely has time to scoop up Pakkun before the man clamps a hand on his shoulder and half drags him back to sensei's apartment.

The door opens before they even reach it.

"Kakashi, I was starting to wor— Orochimaru-sama, what a surprise."

"You're an idiot," Orochimaru says.

Sensei grits his teeth but doesn't say anything.

Kakashi decides to take advantage of unique opportunities and kicks Orochimaru in the shin.

Orochimaru just ignores him. "A boy that can summon at his age will be an asset to the village if you don't let him burn himself out first."

Sensei takes a moment to parse that out, then turns on Kakashi. "Have you been sneaking off to train again?"

"No," Kakashi mutters. "I was just helping Gai. We were moving stuff at his father's construction site. I didn't even do as much as he did. And then Orochimaru showed up and made me run around for no reason."

"Your little friend is older, taller and stronger than you," Orochimaru says. "And used to hard labor. You are scrawny and underfed and short."

Kakashi crosses his arms and scowls. He'd kick him again, but Orochimaru has moved.

"You are using chakra to compensate for your physical weakness," Orochimaru says. "And you do it better than most jounin. Not just anyone could have compensated so smoothly after that fall."

Kakashi… hadn't thought of that. It's second nature to constantly be using his chakra, to regulate the Sharingan, to support the ankle that's been broken so many times the bone has just given up, to keep going when he's at the end of his reserves… but none of that is true now. Chakra can compensate for body weakness when necessary, but using it _instead_ of building strength is lazy, and a good way to get killed when you're in a desperate situation and discover you've been wasting chakra on what should have been built by hard work.

Huh. Maybe this is why he can't seem to scrape together enough chakra for any ninjutsu.

"You fell?" sensei asks. Because of course that's the part he fixates on.

Kakashi scowls. "He pushed me off a roof!"

"I wanted to see what would happen," Orochimaru says. "And I confirmed my theory."

Sensei is starting to look like Kushina in a temper. He whirls on Orochimaru. "You, get out of my house." Then he turns to Kakashi, who takes a step back. "You, inside. We'll talk about this chakra thing later. What were you even doing on the roof?"

Kakashi, fuming, marches into the house. None of this is his fault!

* * *

Sensei calms down, eventually. He introduces himself to Maito Dai, and the two work out a sort of timeshare where Kakashi gets supervised four afternoons a week and Gai spends weekends with them.

"I can watch myself!" Kakashi protests, though he waits until they're back at the apartment. No need to be rude to Gai's father.

"Pushed. Off. A roof," sensei says.

At least he still gets to spend one afternoon a week at sensei's office, and Kushina still teaches him about seals when she's home.

He stops using his chakra all the time, and spends a horrible two weeks where it feels like he can barely crawl out of bed. But it passes, and after that he's able to talk sensei into real training, not just conditioning exercises.

Well, sensei's idea of real training, anyway.

He has to go to therapy two mornings a week, but it could be worse. Mostly they just sit and stare at each other for an hour, but sometimes he gets some useful advice about coping with panic attacks, and his therapist actually helps him convince sensei that returning to training would be a 'good sign of positive progress'."

His nightmares lessen, and he sometimes goes whole weeks between panic attacks.

Pakkun grows, and learns to talk, and Kakashi was exactly right that he wasn't going to stay boss dog for long.

Kushina and sensei obsess over him constantly, even though they both have jobs and lives of their own, and Kakashi is perfectly capable of taking care of himself, thank you very much.

Things… things are okay. And Kakashi thinks that, maybe someday, he might be okay, too.


End file.
